Rich Hofmann: Hanging out in the NHL replay room in Toronto

TORONTO - It doesn't take long, less than a minute. They all have settled into their chairs in a dark room that glows from the light of about 30 television and laptop screens, settled in for a long night that will feature a dozen NHL games and the potential for at least a few controversies. The easy conversation of co-workers combines with three play-by-play announcers droning on simultaneously in two languages.

Then the Leafs' Jay Rosehill appears to score a goal behind the Flyers' Michael Leighton, and one voice raises above the others.

"Murph, that one went in a little funny," says Mark Barbetta, from one of the workstations arrayed around the room. At which point, you can feel the adrenaline build.

Thus does a clockwork kind of process begin: the video review of a disputed goal. NHL senior vice president of hockey operations Mike Murphy, the man who runs the room, immediately gets on the intercom to the replay official's booth in Air Canada Centre - he gets their attention with a strobe-light signal that he controls with the flick of a switch on the big console in front of him - and he is told by them that they think the puck might have gone in off Rosehill's hand. A few seconds after that, with the conversation turned up loud, Murphy is speaking to Bill McCreary, the referee.

"Off to a good start, Murph," McCreary said.

"Billy, our question is, did he get it with his glove?" said Murphy, whose crew is located in the 11th floor of an office building next to the Air Canada Centre.

As this conversation is happening, the process has already begun. TSN, the broadcast outlet televising the game, comes quickly with the replays - several of them, including from the overhead camera that is controlled by the NHL itself. (The Flyers' broadcast is not viewed because Comcast SportsNet is not available on satellite dishes.)

It is a collegial process. The men are assigned to watch specific games but they all get involved in the review of a disputed goal, however briefly. This night, Tim Campbell, John Sedgwick and former NHL players Kris King and Kay Whitmore all join the conversation. Replays are shown of Rosehill being launched across the crease and attempting to bunt the puck into the net. The question: Does it hit his hand or the shaft of the stick?

Opinions are exchanged with the playing of each replay. The overhead camera often is the most telling, but maybe not this time. They slow it down, try to isolate the actions as best they can. They have a good angle, but it is still close.

Pretty quickly, though, there is a consensus. Everyone in the room has spoken. At that point, Murphy gets back on the intercom to McCreary and tells him, "We have the puck batted in with his left hand. No goal."

McCreary thanks Murphy and announces the unpopular decision to the crowd. The adrenaline in the room quickly falls as everyone gets back to watching his designated game. Murphy's phone rings; it is Colin Campbell, the NHL's senior executive director of hockey operations, who is monitoring things from a workstation in his home. Murphy talks him through the decision.

Sitting nearby, Kris King says, "That was a hard one. That was as hard as

we've had in a couple of weeks."

You walk in expecting something that looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Instead, what you find is a narrow room - 36 feet by 12 feet - dominated by a pair of 65-inch plasma screens at one end and arrayed with individual workstations loaded with smaller screens and DVRs. (There are more in a next-door annex for busy nights, like last night.)

You walk in expecting, well, Big Brother. The NHL is the only sport where the video-replay decisions are made off-site, away from the venue where the game is occurring, and the unintentional result has been the cultivation of this image among hockey fans: cold, distant, mysterious, imperious, unaccountable, all-powerful. Toronto.

Instead, though, what you find when you spend a night here is a group of men, hunched over video screens, working for a living, trying to get it right.

They are just days removed from one of their biggest controversies: the withholding of a crucial replay by a Pittsburgh television producer, a replay that cost the Flyers' Simon Gagne a goal and raised questions about the integrity of the entire system. Few outside seem prepared to acknowledge that the people in this room were the victims, as much as Gagne and the Flyers.

"When it happened," said Sedgwick, who was assigned to the Flyers-Penguins game that night, "and when they finally showed the [definitive] replay, I felt immediately that there was some gamesmanship going in. I could sense it immediately. We all felt bad - we all want to get it right - but we need people to show us the right replays or it doesn't reflect well on anyone."

Where to begin? With the bottom-line standard, the single rule by which everyone lives in the Roger Neilson Video Room, named for the late coach and video pioneer. That is, you call it as you see it - but only if you can see it.

Or, as Campbell said: "The question I always ask at [league] meetings is, 'Do you want us to guess or do you want us to see it?' The rule is, we have to see it. In the Flyers-Penguins game, the feeling in the room was that it was probably in. But we couldn't see it, and you have to be able to see it."

Campbell is the league's dean of discipline. He is aware of the concerns, that teams could potentially manipulate the review process. Both he and Murphy said there might have been one or two other times in the years they have been doing this where they wondered the same thing.

"A fatal flaw? No, not a fatal flaw," Campbell said. "You would hope that everybody would show you every possible angle they have. The Pittsburgh people are good people. They were tempted, though. They got the replay late but they held it."

Every professional sport that uses replay faces a similar/identical issue because, during the regular season, most Major League Baseball, NBA and NHL games are broadcast locally and not by a neutral, national network.

The NFL has a different issue, and is the only league that tolerates a homefield video advantage. At NFL games - for instance, at Lincoln Financial Field - replays that might assist Eagles coach Andy Reid in deciding whether to challenge a call are shown immediately on the stadium video boards while the visiting coach is given no such benefit. Additionally, because the stadium crew has access to its own in-house cameras - with different angles than the television broadcast - the Eagles could potentially have access to the only definitive angle on a play but the visiting team and the referee would not.

Asked about this a year after the Linc opened, an NFL spokesman said, "Every team has eight home games,'' as if the manipulation fell under the category of harmless gamesmanship. The NHL, by comparison, clearly views what happened in the Flyers-Penguins game as an integrity issue. The producer in question was suspended indefinitely by FSN Pittsburgh.

After it happened, questions began to surface pretty quickly and the concerns and the allegations - including from the Flyers - immediately began to reach Campbell's inbox.

"The e-mails were getting longer and longer," Campbell said. "And our point was, 'Guys, we didn't see that angle.' The problem is, a lot of people don't want to hear our excuses.

"I didn't want to question the integrity of the broadcast. I really did not want to go there, but I ended up feeling like I had to. I had to back up my guys.

"We're conscientious. We care. We were not happy when we did not have this key replay.''

Because they are removed from the action, often by thousands of miles, they are forced to live with the sense of Big Brotherism. But Campbell says the distance, unique to pro sports, is the best way.

"By far," he said. "By far. We have the comfort of a quiet room. We have the ability to be consistent. We have the input of six, seven people who are able to quickly weigh in on a decision, experienced people.

"The old way, we had 60 people doing it, making the decisions [two replay officials per team, each working half of the home games]. There were times then when we would be watching it and saying, 'I hope they get it right, I hope they get it right, I hope they get it right, aw, hell.' And then you knew a team would be on the phone."

Today, the people who watch the games, besides being aware for disputed goals, also log every penalty, offer officiating critiques, do spot checks to make sure commercial breaks are the correct length, and watchdog various other issues.

In the Flyers-Leafs game, a minicontroversy surrounded Toronto's third goal when a replay showed six Leafs celebrating. Did they have too many men on the ice? It is not a reviewable issue but it remained a concern in the room last night. Piecing together replays, they concluded with certainty that there were only five Leafs on the ice - and Whitmore even offered what turned out to be the explanation confirmed by a later replay: that a Leafs player was leaving the ice on a change, saw the goal, and stayed on to join the celebration.

On and on it went.

"Goal for Ottawa - looks good.''

"What's the penalty in St. Louis? Good call?''

"How much time left in Toronto?''

"Goal in Detroit. Clean goal.''

On and on it went, into the night.

Send e-mail to hofmanr@phillynews.com,

or read his blog, The Idle Rich, at

http://go.philly.com/theidlerich. For recent columns go to http://go.philly.com/hofmann.