This didn't look like a goal, but it was. (griffvision)
This didn't look like a goal, but it was. (griffvision)

Something very strange happened in Friday night’s game between the American Hockey League’s Grand Rapids Griffins and Lake Erie Monsters. Following a scoreless regulation, it looked as though overtime finished with the same score. The game was due to be determined via shootout. Before that could happen though, the buzzer blew and the Griffins were handed a 1-0 victory.

That was because the referees went back and checked the video of a shot from earlier in overtime. It turns out they played 2:52 longer than they needed to because the extra period should have ended at the 2:08 mark. That was when Detroit Red Wings draft pick Nick Jensen fired a slap shot that didn’t just go in the net, but through it.

In the referees defense, it's really hard to tell when it's at full speed. Lucky for us, there's such a thing as slow (and even slower) motion replays. Take a look.

As Jensen skated into the zone, he drilled a hard slap shot past Monsters goalie Brad Thiessen. At full speed, it looks like your eyes are playing a trick on you. It appears that the puck went inside the bar, but it's hard to justify that when you watch the puck bang hard off the boards and up the ice. Did it go just high? Just wide?

Slowed down, it becomes clearer and clearer that the puck just went clean through the net. The only visual evidence of that was Thiessen’s water bottle popping ever so slightly off the net before resting back where it was.

Griffins forward Tyler Bertuzzi, who had the best look of anyone on the ice at it, seemed to know right away that it was a goal. Even the bench reacted with arms raised before quickly putting them down when it looked like their eyes had deceived them. But it took them a while to get it right.

Oddly enough, there was no whistle between when that happened and the end of overtime. The final buzzer gave the referees their first chance to review the play and there was no denying the video evidence. It just had to be slowed way down to see it.

That’s a heck of a shot from Jensen, who was a fifth-round pick by the Red Wings back in 2009 and is in his third year of professional hockey. It's just his second goal of the season.

That goal gave the Griffins, the Red Wings’ farm club, their 14th straight victory on home ice.

[H/T Reddit]