Shortly after the Dallas Stars had been ordained Stanley Cup champions* in the wee hours of Fathers Day morning, Sabres coach Lindy Ruff confronted NHL Commissioner Basketball Jones and demanded an explanation.

Bettman, without a word, turned his back on Ruff, the Buffalo Sabres organization and fans of the team everywhere, and walked away.

"He just turned his back on me," said Ruff. "He looked at me like he knew this might be a tainted goal and there was no answer for it."

With 36 hours to think it over, Commissioner-Shmomissioner Bettman presided over a press conference announcing the elimination of video replay for crease violations in the 1999-2000 season, and said of the questionable goal (he alluded to it simply as "Saturday night"): "the rule was absolutely correctly applied... unfortunately, so many people didn't understand the rule."

What colossal bullshit. What an unmitigated bush operation those people are running.

The goal, said Bryan Lewis, supervisor of officials, was good because Brett Hull had continuous "possession and control" of the puck prior to entering the crease.

Is this something new? Did I miss a memo?

According to Lewis, yes, I did.

Lewis claims the league circulated a memo to officials March 25 outlining when a goal scored with an attacker in the crease would be allowed to stand, and that this memo is as clear and on point in favor of the outcome determined by the league in this situation as the actual NHL rulebook is not:

Rule 78. (b) Unless the puck is in the goal crease area, a player of the attacking side may not stand in the goal crease. If a player has entered the crease prior to the puck, and subsequently the puck should enter the net while such conditions prevail, the apparent goal shall not be allowed. If an attacking player has physically interfered with the goalkeeper, prior to or during the scoring of the goal, the goal shall be disallowed and a penalty for goalkeeper interference will be assessed. The ensuing face-off shall be taken in the neutral zone at the face-off spot nearest the attacking zone of the offending Team.

"The debate here seems to be, 'Did he or did he not have possession and control?'" Lewis said. It does? How's that?

"Our view was yes, he did. He played the puck from his foot to his stick, shot and scored."

Your view? But wait:

Rule 93. (h) The On Ice Officials or Video Goal Judge may be consulted to establish if an attacking player has entered the crease prior to the puck, and subsequent goal. The Video Goal Judge may initiate this information to the Officials by calling to ice level. The Video Goal Judge is to advise the Referee of the position of the attacking player when the puck enters the crease or is in contact with the crease line. Any information as to the position of the attacking player may be "overruled" if the Officials have determined that the attacking player was pushed or held in the crease at the time of a goal being scored.

The NHL rulebook would never be put in one of those satellites we send to other planets and then let dribble out of the solar system on the chance that someday another intelligent species would pick it up and learn the English language, owing mostly I think to its being written almost entirely in Canadian. But Rule 93(h) could not possibly be more clear on the division of responsibility: the Video Goal Judge is to "advise the Referee of the position of the attacking player"; the determination of how he got there is to be made by the on-ice official.

So we have a brand new rule with brand new people enforcing it. Good thing Lewis circulated that memo, you could really see this getting all gummed up somehow.

"Having looked at it, the determination by those of us upstairs in the goal judges' location was in fact that Hull played the puck. Hull had possession and control of the puck. The rebound off the goalie does not change anything. It is his puck then to shoot and score albeit a foot may or may not be in the crease prior to."

If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

Lewis claimed that he and his flunkies upstairs reviewed the goal from six to eight different angles and ruled the goal good. Given the time between the goal and the celebration, with media, league officials and well-wishing civilians flocking the ice at the Marena, that would be, what, about 0.8 seconds of review per angle?

A coach, team, fans, and a sport that deserve an explanation instead gets a riddled motley of justification.

* * *

So, Mr. Lewis, if the goal was being reviewed, where was the announcement from the P.A. guy to that effect?

No go. According to Lewis, that's not always necessary, because sometimes the decision can be made so quickly.

Mr. Lewis, you're a liar.

First off, it may not always be necessary to let the people in the building know the goal is under review, but if it ever is, it damn sure is when a ton of people are flocking onto the ice and the league is rolling out its blue carpet for Gary Bettman's annual photo op. And further, can any thinking person fail to understand that if indeed there are times when the decision whether a goal is a goal can be made quickly, the goal that would decide the Stanley Cup champion* IS NOT ONE OF THEM?

How many times has it taken a couple of loops of Jeopardy theme music for video replay officials to determine whether someone's skate was even in the crease? And that's not a matter of judgment, only fact (which we know is all they're supposed to be doing).

The same breed of person who needs a nacho run to figure out if a toe was in the crease in game 22 of the regular season can decide the Stanley Cup* in record time? And, more to the point, is allowed to?

If Lewis is telling the truth, he and his compatriots are guilty of egregiously poor judgment procedurally while interpreting a phantom rule that only an on-ice referee should be interpreting if it exists at all.

Lewis isn't telling the truth, and he knows it.

* * *

Having said all this, the crease rule is a load of crap, and always has been. As Terry Jones of the Edmonton Sun said, "Five years ago it would have been a goal. Next year it'll be a goal again. But at 1:33 a.m. EDT [Sunday] morning it wasn't a goal."

The league, citing concern not over the integrity of the game but "spontaneity" -- the gratification of being able to cheer a goal without review -- eliminated video replay on crease violations on Monday.

Well, gee. Now this will never happen again. Right?

Right, as far as The League is concerned, because the next triple overtime Stanley Cup*-winning goal that counts that shouldn't have will be the on ice official's fault, not Bryan Lewis', and not Gary Bettman's.

Thank heavens for these stewards of the game's greatness and integrity, or else the NHL might be a second-rate operation lagging far behind football, baseball and basketball in terms of popularity in the United States.

Still, in hockey, if not in the Bettman-Lewis Hockey League, it was a "good" goal, even if the league can't pull an acceptable justification for allowing it to stand out of its ass.

The Buffalo Sabres lost the series not because Brett Hull scored an illegal goal, but because no one took Hull out before he could get off the shot, and because Dominik Hasek was prone on the ice, out of position, and didn't keep the puck out of the net. They lost because the Dallas Stars won three games before the Sabres did, putting them in a position to benefit from the league's buffoonery.

The Dallas Stars won the series because they were the better team, by a couple hairs, and to a man, they deserve to have their names on the Stanley Cup*. Further, they don't deserve to have their championship tainted.

But either game six was played under the same rules as had governed every other NHL contest in the 1998-99 season, or it wasn't. Or, a third possibility now, it was played under those rules, but as interpreted in a memo circulated only to league operatives, so no one quite knew what they were.

"All the team wanted to see was the same procedure we had gone through in the regular year," Ruff said. "They wanted to hear the horn sound. They wanted to hear the announcer say `This goal is under review.' They wanted somebody to say, two or three minutes later, after reviewing it that the goal stands."

What they wanted, they didn't get. What they got was railroaded. Good goal or no. That decision was never made. The NHL took an apparent Stanley Cup*-winning goal by the Dallas Stars and ran with it.

What had been a classic Stanley Cup* final became with just seconds of paralysis on the part of the league a travesty. A champion was artificially anointed, the runner-up jobbed like no team in the history of the league had been jobbed before, and the nonsensical league spin control in the days following only makes it worse.

* * *

Bettman's comments to the effect that "spontaneity" was his preliminary concern in trashing video replay for crease violations is the most poignant indictment of the league's misplay of the Hull goal there is. Lindy Ruff called losing game six in triple overtime on a disputed goal his "worst nightmare"; the league's equivalent would be an apparent Stanley Cup*-winning goal reviewed for three minutes before players and fans could celebrate, like Ruff wanted. Can you imagine how that would have played on ESPN the next morning?

Did Bettman, Colin Campbell and Lewis discuss with their on- and off-ice officials prior to the potential Stanley Cup*-deciding game the need for expediency in video review determinations of potential winning goals?

And when it was impossible to combine that expediency with the thoroughness and good judgment necessary to preserve the integrity of the result due to the circumstances on the ice, did Lewis and his henchmen simply blow it?

Did months of work, sacrifice and pain on the part of Sabres players and decades of emotional investment in the team by its fans fall victim to the league's desire for good press? Did the league's emphasis on sizzle over steak cost the Dallas Stars a "clean" Stanley Cup championship*?

We know Lewis lied about the circumstances of review, or at best simply demonstrated excruciatingly poor judgment in the process; we don't have to make a two-line pass of a logical leap to surmise that Gary Bettman's prime concern was not the integrity of the result of the game but how it would play on the sports shows; we know Hull's skate was in the crease; and we know that the goal was no goal according to the letter of the rules and hundreds of precedents.

Players on both teams, people in both organizations, and everyone reading this, as fans of the game, deserved better. But good luck getting it from this crew.

Bettman is "credited" with establishing a league footprint in the southern U.S., with brokering an acceptable labor agreement, with selling the game to U.S. television networks, and with obtaining lucrative corporate partnerships with sponsors. And we couldn't possibly be happier about this, especially those of us in, say, Winnipeg.

He is discredited by the result of the 1999 Stanley Cup championship*.

All of the new markets, television contracts, and marketing revenue amounts to Bettman's new clothes. Underneath it all, he and his game are really just buck naked, and no one is terribly impressed by the display.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Matt Barr would like to thank Jorge Marques, of the back-to-back Original Eight League champion* Vancouver Hosers, for his contributions to this article.)

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