During last night’s 5-2 win over the Bruins, the Rangers benefited from two video reviews that went in their favor. The first took place at the halfway point of the first period when Lee Stempniak thought he has tied the game. However, coach Alain Vigneault challenged for offside. A good challenge since Brad Marchand never controlled the puck when he entered the zone, preceding it. Here’s the video review and full explanation:

As you can see, Marchand clearly enters the zone before the puck making the play offside. The play should’ve been whistled dead. Instead, play continued with Stempniak scoring. Luckily, the replay challenge showed conclusive evidence to reverse the call on the ice. It was a huge turning point with the Rangers going up 2-0 on a Derek Stepan power play goal shortly after. Instead of being tied, the Bruins trailed by two.

More controversial was the second video review. With the Bruins trailing 3-1 three and a half minutes into the third, Stempniak thought he had scored to cut it to 3-2 at the 3:35 mark. He got to a Brad Marchand rebound and fired a loose puck that a sprawling Henrik Lundqvist dove across to glove at the goal line. It was a bang bang play making the refs’ original ruling of “no goal” understandable. From upstairs, I felt the same way. Here’s what they determined during video review:

On the initial replay, one angle makes it look inconclusive that the puck completely crossed the line. However, NBC’s second angle seems to indicate that as Lundqvist gloved it, the puck was fully over which would’ve made it a good goal. Due to it being in his glove, they couldn’t determine if it clearly was making the call on the ice stand. Let’s just say the Rangers got a huge break here. In the future when they have better technology, such rulings will be reversed.

For the Blueshirts, they definitely got some breaks to win their second straight on home ice. However, they also were the better team taking advantage of a sloppy performance by the Bruins. Considering that they’ve had their fare share of calls go against them, they were due for one in their favor.

As for the challenge and video replay system, it remains inconsistent. Until that changes, there will continue to be displeasure over the system. John Tortorella has been outspoken about it. Ultimately, the NHL must make changes to improve the challenge and replay system. A revised one should make everyone happy.