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Biggest injustices in the history of hockey

Gregor Samsa

Gregor Samsa

Registered User
Sep 5, 2020
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It could be a player, team, game, season, career, call…whatever

I’m looking for rotten luck, bad breaks, poor timing, and just instances of unfairness, whether by fortune or human error
 
frisco said:
NO GOAL--Brett Hull.

My Best-Carey
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This is probably the biggest. It was wild to watch the NHL blatantly ignore a very black-and-white rule it had stubbornly clung to all season. Absolute insanity. Sure the rule was beyond stupid, but choosing to ignore it on a Cup winning goal was wild. Never before or since have I see any league in any sport literally throw the rules out the window on a championship deciding play.
 
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Canada winning Summit Series 1972 against URSS, without Bobby "The Pig" Clarke dirty move on Kharlamov, there was no way Canada would have won 3 games in a row.
 
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FissionFire said:
This is probably the biggest. It was wild to watch the NHL blatantly ignore a very black-and-white rule it had stubbornly clung to all season. Absolute insanity. Sure the rule was beyond stupid, but choosing to ignore it on a Cup winning goal was wild. Never before or since have I see any league in any sport literally throw the rules out the window on a championship deciding play.
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And what makes it stand out from other bad calls:

1) Season ending. Most other egregious calls, at least the team had time to still come back and overcome them. But not if they are on the last play of the season in the Finals.

2) Theoretically, even if they missed it originally, it was a reviewed play. The league and the off-ice officials (we're looking at you Bryan Lewis) had a chance to review it until they got it right.

My Best-Carey
 
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I feel like there is a parallel but in an opposite sort of way between Hull’s skate in crease, and the Tom Brady tuck rule
 
We've been over this Hull-skate-in-crease thing a million times. As I recall it (someone will correct me), the NHL issued an official rule "clarification" before the 1999 playoffs where they updated the conditions for foot-in-the-crease, and, if you take it literally, it's quite arguable (at least 50-50, if not higher on the good-goal side of it) that Hull's goal was legit.

The problem is not really that there was any injustice, but rather that STUPID rule in the first place, which did great damage to the sport.
 
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The Panther said:
We've been over this Hull-skate-in-crease thing a million times. As I recall it (someone will correct me), the NHL issued an official rule "clarification" before the 1999 playoffs where they updated the conditions for foot-in-the-crease, and, if you take it literally, it's quite arguable (at least 50-50, if not higher on the good-goal side of it) that Hull's goal was legit.
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Ah yes, the phantom memo, which still doesn't come close to clarifying anything and somehow was ignored on every other similar goal that playoffs.

And also, the after the fact on-air ad hoc explanation on why the goal should stand. Just made an impossible situation worse.

My Best-Carey
 
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Sergei Bure said:
Canada winning Summit Series 1972 against URSS, without Bobby "The Pig" Clarke dirty move on Kharlamov, there was no way Canada would have won 3 games in a row.
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Bit of a stretch to say "there was no way". It's quite possible that exactly the same thing would have happened. We'll never know.

I wouldn't count game one as a real test of the two clubs' power balance, as Canada clearly didn't take the game very seriously (also, most of the players being out of shape after months at the lake). Hence, they got clobbered.

In the next four games, all with Kharlamov playing, Canada was 1-2-1, and both losses were very close. Certainly Kharlamov was a big loss for USSR, but there's no guarantee that they weren't going to lose a few games.
___________________________

For "biggest injustice" in hockey history, I will suggest that scumbag, Alan Eagleson, after Canada Cup 1981.

The Soviets won it fair and square, but Eagleson... wouldn't let them take the trophy.

The man was just all class.
 
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I always thought the Steve Smith own goal was too bad. Calgary was very good and maybe they still win without it but I feel like Gretzkys career is essentially perfect with 5 straight cup wins. In my mind the 86 playoffs are the only blemish.
 
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Gambitman said:
I always thought the Steve Smith own goal was too bad. Calgary was very good and maybe they still win without it but I feel like Gretzkys career is essentially perfect with 5 straight cup wins. In my mind the 86 playoffs are the only blemish.
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You know what? Even as a lifelong Oilers fan, I don't really mind the 1986 loss.

Calgary was clearly the better team that series (in four games at Northlands in Edmonton, the Oilers won a grand total of ZERO games in three periods). Hard luck to the Oil on the series winning goal, but they had not played well enough all series.

The Oilers' Dynasty had two major "shifts" -- one was after the 1983 sweep by the Islanders. Gretzky assumed the captaincy, but it was a case of the young guys suddenly having to become team leaders. They decided to divide the next season into games vs. Campbell Conference opponents and games vs. Wales Conference opponents, to make sure they were ready for the Eastern teams in case they met in the Finals again. Then, the second shift occurred in the summer and autumn of 1986. After the Calgary loss, the 1985-Oilers' hockey (high octane with 'miracle' saves; Coffey going end-to-end; and, because of rule changes, 4-on-4 dominance) ended. It was all business after that, with the regular season becoming merely a necessary burden. In the '87, '88, and '90 playoffs, the Oilers were able to play two-way hockey very well, including locking it down defensively quite often.

All of which is to say, I'm not sure the Oilers even in the '87 and '88 Cups if they hadn't lost to Calgary in 1986.

______________

The fly in Gretzky's legacy-ointment, as I see it, is the Kings' loss in the 1993 Cup Finals to Montreal (or, if you prefer, the Kings loss to Edmonton in April 1991 -- the best team Gretzky played on after leaving Edmonton).

I strongly believe that L.A. -- despite being, in some ways, a very weak Cup Finalist (as the following season showed) -- would have won the 1993 Stanley Cup if not for Marty McSorley's stick.

Being able to drag L.A. to a Stanley Cup, well into the '90s, would have been the ultimate capper to Gretzky's legend.
 
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the biggest injustices? i mean anaheim just hired a coach and edmonton has a gm who both shouldn’t be allowed to collect hockey cards

gotta be up there
 
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Lot of people felt that Richard out for all the playoff was a big one according to their reaction, maybe they did not had replay of what Richard did (because its was quite suspension worthy) and believed Richard side of the story, or more a general idea of a longer list of injustice leading to Richard action.

All that to be said, a lot of people could have felt has the biggest injustice, at least that what their riot action seem to indicate.

Nordiques leaving in a way, in a different way hard to call it injustice considering the ownership and the Jets leaving has well, feeling the Expo were about too... at least it was a more generalize "injustice" feeling around free-agency/salary/exchange rate if there was one than a personal-targeted one.

The Bon Cop, Bad Cop movie was one of the biggest ever and based around a serial killer that took the Nordiques leaving injustice too much to heart, not just the Nordiques but Canada not winning cup anymore in general, but the Nordiques leaving, the Lindros affair, etc....

Some of those feeling were quite late 80s-90s and feel a bit alien now, rewatching Jerry McGuire in the 2020s is a reminder that at one point in the past athletes making a lot of money was a very hot talk, controversy, made people angry, etc... When the last time people took owner side in those kind of talks now ? People have more problem with a CEO of a multinational making third line nhl, bench player in other sport salary than athlete making big bucks...

It was a bit of a running gag, but maybe bigger than Hull goal in Quebec was the Alain Cote goal that made Montreal win the series against the Nordiques in 1987:

ici.radio-canada.ca

Le but d'Alain Côté: 30 ans plus tard | Sports | Radio-Canada

Le numéro 19 qui s'amène en zone du Canadien. Le contact entre deux adversaires devant le filet. Le gardien Brian Hayward en déséquilibre. Cette rondelle qui entre faiblement jusqu'au fond du but du Canadien. L'arbitre Kerry Fraser qui agite les bras. La confusion des commentateurs. La colère de...
ici.radio-canada.ca ici.radio-canada.ca

This was a big talking point for years, the legend of Fraser and became a long meme-expression between the 2 city..
 
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Fire Sweeney said:
Hart award voting manipulation in 1990 and 2002
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The trophies are generally given out based on votes from homer media members, the 1990 and 2002 situations are not that noteworthy. Sometimes votes are close, like those years. Even in terms of quality of voting, the voters get it wrong all the time with NHL awards.

The only "injustice" I can think of with awards is 2013 because the NHL wouldn't concede an actual error in the voting and put Ovechkin as second team LW when he was RW (and first team RW) that year. Off the top of my head I think Hall was the guy who should have been awarded second team LW based on voting. Injustice is too strong a word though, it's just a stupid choice. I do think that Selke voters admitting that they ignore the criteria is also a problem, but again the media members are far from experts or even all that serious about their task.
 
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This obviously isn't the biggest injustice but Pocklingtons business problems forcing the Gretzky trade and break up of a dynasty team.

This is the prelude.to the salary cap which also is the bed of dynasty teams in any real sense.

Like I said not the biggest but still all time impacts.
 
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Letting Gretzky skip the draft with the whole WHA thing and personal services contract. Not only one implicated but most impactful in nhl history.
 
Canada Cup 1987. The tournament was rigged in favor of Canada. The USSR despite committing maybe 10% of all fouls spent more time in the penalty box than Canada.
 
The Panther said:
We've been over this Hull-skate-in-crease thing a million times. As I recall it (someone will correct me), the NHL issued an official rule "clarification" before the 1999 playoffs where they updated the conditions for foot-in-the-crease, and, if you take it literally, it's quite arguable (at least 50-50, if not higher on the good-goal side of it) that Hull's goal was legit.

The problem is not really that there was any injustice, but rather that STUPID rule in the first place, which did great damage to the sport.
Click to expand...
To be fair they went to that extreme because goalies were being battered like crazy so they wanted to create a rule that induced players to not even attempt to cross any line and mess with the goalie
 
WarriorofTime said:
Letting Gretzky skip the draft with the whole WHA thing and personal services contract. Not only one implicated but most impactful in nhl history.
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How is that an injustice?

Story goes he actually could've entered the draft but had no desire to play in Colorado because they were so bad.
 
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