Situation Room

a league official watching game video

The Situation Room is where the National Hockey League has league personnel at the leagues headquarters in Toronto review various video footage from arenas to make sure that a goal was a "good goal" or should be disallowed due to a number of reasons or review a "coaches challenge" to a missed call by official.

Among the things that get reviewed on a goal are:

1. Did the puck actually cross the goal line?
2. Did it "beat the siren"?
3. Was the way it got in the net legal
   1. Was it put in with a blatant kicking motion?
   2. Was it hit with a stick that above the cross bar?
   3. Was it played by a hand into the net?
4. Was the goaltender interfered with? And did he have time to reset
5. Was the play offside (coaches challenge)

Officials can review to make sure the clock is properly set after a stoppage in play where the clock may have stopped early or ran too long

As of the 2018-19 season some things are not considered reviewable, such as (some of the more controversial instances from the 2019 Stanley Cup playoffs):

1. a puck going out of play and coming back into play and a goal being scored afterwards (occurred in game 4 of the 2019 Boston Bruins-Columbus Blue Jackets second round series) in this case where the puck hit the netting above the end boards and most everyone on the ice lost sight of the puck and it came down to the ice and a player shot the puck and the goalie made a save and another player scored on the rebound.
2. A hand pass being made prior to the shot being made that results in a goal such as occurred in overtime of game 3 of the 2019 Western Conference final between the St. Louis Blues and the San Jose Sharks, where a San Jose player batted the puck with his glove and a teammate played the puck and then shot the puck into the net for the winning goal.
3. Penalties are not reviewable, such as a call in in the third period of the 2019 San Jose Sharks-Vegas Golden Knights first round series where a Vegas player was assessed a five minute major penalty for cross checking when he cross-checked a San Jose player and the player then collided with another play eventually ended up on the ice hitting the right side of his face on the ice and he started bleeding. Originally, neither of the referees signaled for a penalty but as the play went on and they saw he was bleeding a five minute major and a game misconduct was assessed to the Vegas player who originally made the hit. Vegas was ahead 3-0 at the time of the penalty. San Jose scored four goals on the ensuing powerplay and won the game and series in overtime.