BUFFALO, N.Y. — While it's hard to believe, it has been 20 years since "no goal" gave the Dallas Stars the win in game six of the 1999 Stanley Cup Final. Ask any Buffalo Sabres fan who was alive at the time and they will probably tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when the goal was scored.
In the NHL that season there was a rule that even if the tiniest part of a player's skate was in the crease when a goal was scored, it wouldn't count. Countless goals were called back during the regular season because of the rule. Before the playoffs started, the league communicated with teams that the rule was changing, that it wouldn't be called the same way in the playoffs that it was during the regular season.
Little did the NHL realize that such a goal would decide the decisive game of the Stanley Cup Final. Brett Hull's goal in triple overtime gave the Stars a 2-1 win in game six and make them the Stanley Cup champions by winning the series 4 games to 2.
Immediately after the goal was scored the Sabres said it shouldn't count because Hull's skate was in the crease. The great majority of media and fans didn't realize until they saw the replay that Hull's skate was definitely in the crease.
The topic came up ten years later when Brett Hull was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
"We all knew that they had changed the rule, but obviously the NHL decided they weren't going to tell anybody but the teams ... They changed the rule to say if you have control in the crease, you can score the goal, and that's exactly what it was," Hull said. "But nobody knows that. You can tell people that a million time and they just will not listen."
And to this day his comment resonates because no one, especially Sabres fans, want to hear that. Many have trouble believing that the league did actually tell teams that they were changing the rule.
Sabres fans will most likely always believe that game six should still be going. Instead they had to watch Hull and his Dallas teammates celebrate a Stanley Cup championship on their ice.