Burrows celebrated the crucial marker mimicking the snapping of his stick over his knee, acknowledging the end of the streak. The Canucks killed the remaining 25 seconds of Carolina's powerplay and held on for the final 57 seconds of the game to win by a score of 4-3.
During their 2009 win-less span, the Canucks' win-loss record slipped from 22-15-5 to 22-20-8. Burrow's shorthanded goal, however, sparked the club to win 23 of their remaining 32 games, finishing the season with a 45-27-10 overall record and clinching the Northwest Divisiontitle.
Amazing, DiPietro and Johnson ended their respective careers with nearly identical numbers. DiPietro appeared in 9 more regular season games (318 vs. 309) and 5 fewer playoff games (10 vs. 15) than Johnson, managing a marginally poorer goals against average (2.87 vs. 2.63) and save percentage (.902 vs. .904), though with a far lesser team.
On February 1st in 1993, former NBA senior vice-president and general counsel Gary Bettman was appointed Commissioner of the NHL. As clever as he is unpopular, Bettman has brought tremendous change to the game introducing and alienating fans alike.
During his 30 year tenure, Bettman has presided over the:
massive team realignment extinguishing historic divisional rivalries (1993-2000);
overhaul of the playoff system mandating that teams play out of their conference rather than their division (1993);
awarding of each division winner with one of the top three spots in the conference for playoff match-up purposes regardless of where their points would otherwise place them in the standings (1998);
awarding of one point to teams losing in sudden death overtime thereby extending differing point values to games depending on their duration (2pts for regulation games, 3pts for overtime games)(1999);
On February 1st in 2012, Los Angeles Kings defenseman Drew Doughty scored a game winning powerplay goal against the Columbus Blue Jackets with 0.4 seconds remaining in the third period. A closer look confirmed the Staples Center game clocked stopped for a full second moments before the goal was scored. Absent the stoppage, the match would have been tied 2-2 upon completion of regulation time and headed to overtime.
The NHL's video room reviewed the goal, but somehow didn't notice the clock had stopped until minutes after the game. Colin Campbell later confirmed the goal should not have counted and the league would conduct an investigation to determine what caused the error. However, the result of the game would remain. And with that, Clockgate was born.
Amazingly, a similar glitch went unnoticed eleven nights earlier.
Afterwards, an irate Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson wrote:
“It is an amazing coincidence that with the Kings on a power play at Staples Center and with a mad scramble around our net in the dying seconds of the third period of a 2-2 hockey game that the clock stopped for at least one full second. I can only think of two ways in which this would have happened. Either there was a deliberate stopping of the clock or the clock malfunctioned."
"Those clocks are sophisticated instruments that calculate time by measuring electrical charges called coulombs – given the rapidity and volume of electrons that move through the measuring device the calibrator must adjust at certain points which was the delay you see. The delay is just recalibrating for the clock moving too quickly during the 10–10ths of a second before the delay. This insures that the actual playing time during a period is exactly 20 minutes. That is not an opinion -– that is science -– amazing device quite frankly."
Commissioner Gary Bettman acknowlegded if the clock had run straight through "the game would have been at a tie at that point, would have gone to overtime." Bettman continued, "if we had any reason to believe that this was intentional we would deal with it in a whole different way, but we're going to investigate it, get to the bottom of it."
Ultimately it was determined that human error caused the pause, as the clock was found to have been manually stopped. Despite Lombardi's quasi-scientific explanation, the NHL's investigation revealed that "clocks do not know how to stop on their own".
The Los Angeles Kings finished 8th in the western conference, snagging the final playoff spot with a five point cushion above the 9th place Calgary Flames. The Columbus Blue Jackets finished the season in last place, with the next closest team nine points ahead. The Kings won the Stanley Cup and the Blue Jackets selected 2nd overall in the 2012 NHL Draft.
While the final standings and playoff picture were not directly affected by the debacle, it's safe to say the integrity of the game and reputation of timekeepers in Los Angeles suffered a significant blow.
The Kings recorded a 3-2 victory over the Blue Jackets.
On February 4th in 2012, Vancouver Canucks blueliner Kevin Bieksa made a spectacular diving save to prevent an empty net goal by T.J. Galiardi with 48 seconds to play, then fired a stanchion-deflected puck past goalie Jean-Sebastien Gigeure 14 seconds later to tie the game.
