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There Was Almost A Massive Timekeeping Controversy In Washington Last Night

With 9.5 seconds left and the Bruins down by a goal, the Capitals lined up for the face-off, which was won by Boston. But as you can see, the clock takes approximately 5 seconds to actually start, and ends up with the Bruins nearly scoring as the clock expires. If not for a brilliant save by Braden Holtby, Caps fans would be out for blood.

This isn’t the first time a clock controversy has erupted in these playoffs, but the oddest twist is that both timekeeping gaffes were committed by the local timekeeper against the home team, as happened on this goal by Detroit against Nashville, when the Detroit timekeeper was slow to stop the clock on the prior whistle. Most of the time the issue is that the home team timekeeper manages to screw the visiting team, as Columbus claims happened to them earlier this year in LA.

UPDATE: TSN has an explanation for the timekeeping controversy.

There was 9.5 seconds left at the faceoff.

The timekeeper was trying to get the referees attention to tell him not to drop the puck because they needed to add 0.9 seconds to make it 10.4 seconds left in the game.

While the timekeeper was yelling at the referee and they were letting the horn go, the referee couldn’t hear anything because the Verizon Center is so loud.

The timekeeper then didn’t start the clock and 5.3 seconds elapsed before he actually got it started.

If Boston had scored at the end of the game, the NHL would have had to disallow any goal from 5.3 seconds left to the end of the game.