The Colorado Avalanche had already lost one goal to a video review by the time Gabriel Landeskog put the puck past the Dallas Stars at 9:29 of the first period at Ball Arena on Wednesday. They were about to lose a second.
The call went to the NHL’s Situation Room in Toronto, where every video review in the league is decided, and the verdict came back that the captain had used a distinct kicking motion. The goal came off the board. Landeskog, asked afterwards whether he had kicked it, answered in one word.
“No,” he said.
He expanded on it from there, and what came out was less a rant than a resigned complaint about how these reviews work.
“You watch in real speed, there’s no chance I kicked that,” Landeskog said. “I get it, though. When you watch it in slow-mo, it looks like a kicking motion. Maybe. But if you watch it in real time…”
He also made clear this wasn’t about a single call.
“Not the first time they take one away, and probably not the last one. It’s okay,” he said.
What is the NHL’s kicking motion rule?
The league publishes its reasoning after every review, and this one came back as a single paragraph of rulebook text. The wording it leaned on describes a motion where the video makes clear that an attacking player has deliberately propelled the puck with a kick of his foot or skate, and states that such a goal cannot stand even if the puck deflects off somebody else on the way in. It sits in Rule 37.4.
The word doing the heavy lifting there is “deliberately,” which is exactly where Landeskog’s objection sits. Head coach Jared Bednar was with him.
“I don’t see a kicking motion there,” Bednar said.
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Supporters watching the replay split cleanly down the middle.
“That’s a good goal. Redirections are a-ok. No kicking motion here,” one wrote.
“While likely not intentional, that is just instinct to get the puck off your skate, and yeah, it’s still a kick. Good call, no goal,” another countered, with a third going further: “He looked straight down and kicked the puck. Obvious kicking motion.”
Landeskog did get one that counted, deflecting a Nazem Kadri feed past Casey DeSmith at 4:55 of the second for his second of the season. It wasn’t enough. Roope Hintz scored in the fourth round of the shootout to give Dallas a 3-2 win and split the home-and-home, a night after Nathan MacKinnon and Hintz had fought in Texas.
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