The Los Angeles Kings‘ clock is making headlines … again.
The Kings hosted the Ottawa Senators on Saturday afternoon and may have been aided by the home rink timekeeper.
When play resumed after the second intermission, the time did not. For several seconds after the faceoff, the timer remained at 20:00.
It appeared to take approximately six seconds for the time to start ticking down in the second. After the first whistle in the period, the clock was adjusted by four seconds.
As the hockey gods would have it, that one extra second would come into play at the end of the period.
With three seconds remaining, Derek Forbort fired the puck towards the net and Trevor Lewis tapped home a goal with .5 seconds left to put the Kings ahead 3-1.
It appeared that, had the timer started at the appropriate time, the goal may not have ever happened.
After the game head coach Guy Boucher was questioned about the controversial call, but he was not concerned.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he told reporters at the Staples Center. “At that point, for us, we just got to shut it down there … It wasn’t about getting a goal there, it was about getting off the ice. We had done the job in the second period, we had looked very good, we had the momentum. We needed to get into the third with a one goal [deficit] … I was confident that we could come back.
“So, no. I’m not looking at clocks, I’m not looking at penalties. I’m looking at ourselves.”
As it turns out, the league made a second correction to the time about a minute after the first correction so that an extra two seconds were not played in the period.