The "Truth" Behind the 2 Goals in Question

To be honest, the replay on the PPV feed is not sharp and it's from fairly far away, making it impossible to really tell what happened on either of the 2 goals in question in game 4. However, the Penticton Vees had a cameraman film the game for them as well, and they were able to slow down both plays on replay to show us exactly what happened. And the "proof is in the pudding" as they say, except this time it's in the video.

The opening goal by the Centennials appears to be the wrong call by linesman Bevan Mills, who was the only one who made the call. According to the slow replay at the end of the video, it's very evident that the puck actually deflected off of Mike Reilly's full facemask (very lucky he was wearing it, or his face would have been a mess). There is still a small chance that the puck grazed off Brears' stick first, which was high, but it doesn't appear like it in the video. So, probably wrong call.



Here's a more close-up look at the waved off goal, and this angle makes it seems a little more likely that the puck did graze Brears' stick, but it's still too tight to call either way.



The 2nd goal, however, was a legitimate goal and a good call by referee Korey Martens. You can even hear some of the Merritt fans admitting that it was a goal. Not a whole lot of argument from the fans right around the camera either. Again, if you fast forward to the slow replay near the end (you can even see it in the original play), you'll see that Benik's shot does in fact pop the water bottle before bouncing back out, and I don't think it ever did hit Chimienti's mask or the crossbar as some fans speculated.



So there you are. Merritt was 50% robbed. And let the speculation begin as to whether that first goal would have ultimately won the game for Merritt or not. Obviously Cents fans will say that it would have, and it's hard to argue with that. After all, everyone knows the value of that "first goal"