It was as heartbreaking as it was cruel for PWHL Minnesota.
The women’s professional hockey team is battling PWHL Boston for the league’s inaugural championship, and it looked as though Minnesota scored the winner in double overtime in Game 4 of the series on Sunday night.
With 2:35 left in the second overtime, Minnesota forward Taylor Heise was charging toward the net with the puck when she fell, but still managed to get a pass off to Sophie Jaques who scored what looked like the winner.
The Minnesota players jumped over the boards in celebration and mobbed their teammates as the crowd inside Xcel Center was whipped into a frenzy.
But the mood shifted when the officials announced the play was under review and then overturned due to goaltender interference.
To make things worse for Minnesota, Boston scored the winning goal 70 seconds later to tie the best-of-five series.
“While you can see Taylor Heise is driving the paint. Whether she goes in on her own — I do believe she is falling,” one of the broadcasters said of the play. “As she is on her way in and Aerin Frankel certainly makes contact with Heise, so the question will be whether or not she went in on her own.”
Replay of the play seemed to show Heise going into the Boston goaltender without any contact from another Boston defender, which the officials seemed to see pushing them to call the goal back.
Alina Muller scored the winner for Boston when she snuck a shot over the shoulder of the Minnesota goaltender and finally closed out the game.
A large crowd of 13,104 was on hand at the Xcel Center for what could have been a championship win for Minnesota, and the game lasted nearly four hours.
The deciding game of the PWHL season will take place on Wednesday at Tsongas Center.
