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Refs provide baffling explanation for Calgary Flames' disallowed goal

Colton Pankiw
Colton Pankiw
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Mar 28 2025, 12:00 pm
Refs provide baffling explanation for Calgary Flames' disallowed goal
Sportsnet

Some questionable overturned calls were the storyline in the Calgary Flames’ 5-2 loss to the Dallas Stars last night.

The Flames played like a team desperate to pick up two points, outshooting the Stars by a 48-20 margin. Suffice it to say, the final score didn’t tell the story in this one. Instead, a few reversed calls were the main talking points.

The first came in the opening period, where Connor Zary drove the net and put home a centring feed from Nazem Kadri that appeared to tie the game up at one apiece. After a quick review, however, it was deemed that he kicked the puck in the net, much to the disappointment of the many fans in attendance at the Saddledome.

“You got guys working their ass off out there and giving everything they got and you’re scoring goals, and you got somebody sitting behind a desk just making a judgment call that influences the game,” Blake Coleman said.

“Two of them that I thought you could put those clips side by side with a ton of different goals this year, and you’re going to get different answers on every goal. So that’s the ambiguity of the sport. And you know, there’s sometimes they go in your favour and sometimes they don’t.”

As frustrating as that call was, it was the following that had everybody scratching their collective heads.

Coleman appeared to tie things up at one again in the second, as he took a feed from Mikael Backlund and beat Casey DeSmith blocker side. The Stars challenged the play, however, and it was overturned due to Joel Farabee making slight contact with DeSmith.

“Maybe touched him, barely. Thought I was outside the blue,” a frustrated Farabee explained. “I was told by the refs that if the shot was glove side, it was a goal, and if it was blocker side, it’s no goal. Not really sure what to think about that.”

The frustration from the Flames was evident on the ice as well. After Nazem Kadri was able to finally get his team on the board to tie things up, he was spotted mocking officials once he got back to the bench.

“I thought they were both goals,” Kadri said. “If that stuff happens in the playoffs, someone’s getting exposed.”

Zary suffers gruesome injury

The loss wasn’t the only bad news for the Flames in this one, as Connor Zary suffered what looked to be another serious knee injury. The 23-year-old fell awkwardly after being taken out by Stars forward Mikko Rantanen, and was in noticeable pain on the ice before being helped down the tunnel.

Zary appeared to be clutching at the same knee he injured in January against the Anaheim Ducks.

“It’s hard to watch. You don’t ever want to see a player go through that,” head coach Ryan Huska said. “You see how hard they work with their rehab and try to put themselves in a position to come back. Our hope now is that the work that he’s done has strengthened his knee up enough so that the injury isn’t serious. We won’t know until later on as to what it’s going to look like, but we’re hopeful, I will say.”

This loss was a costly one for the Flames, as the St. Louis Blues ā€” who they are chasing for the final wild-card position ā€” were able to win their eighth straight versus the Nashville Predators last night.

The good news for the Flames is that they still hold three games in hand on the Blues. They’ll look to tighten the gap on Saturday in a tilt at Rogers Place versus the Edmonton Oilers.

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