How often do you see a referee change his mind? How about without video replay? Needless to say, it doesn’t happen very often. Team captains plead with seemingly no success in today’s NHL to refs to reverse penalties, call goals, whatever else they can do to give their team an edge. But it just doesn’t work. Stories of when it did are few and far between, but on March 10, 1931, Toronto Maple Leafs leader King Clancy did the improbable.

In a game between the Leafs and the Bruins at the Boston Garden, three periods wasn’t enough to decide a winner and the teams went to overtime locked at three. In overtime, Bruin star Cooney Weiland scored the winning goal off a faceoff, scoring against Toronto’s Lorne Chabot. While the rest of his team skated off the ice as the Boston fans cheered, Clancy went to linesman Bill Shaver, a Boston native, and said he was offside when the puck was dropped.

Why Shaver listened to Clancy anybody’s guess, especially in Boston, but he did, and he convinced referee Mickey Ion disallow the goal and face the puck off once more. Ion was called every name in the book and had all kinds of garbage thrown at him, but he called the players back on the ice and dropped the puck once more. Given a second chance, Clancy, Chabot and the Leafs took full advantage and they skated off to a 3-3 tie.

That kind of thing just doesn’t happen anymore. With dozens of cameras, in-game replay, and egos the size of New York, hockey has greatly lost that “human” effect that interprets the game. No longer do names like Ion and Shaver ring in our ears. These days it’s hard to even name a handful of referees. But maybe that just comes with the evolution of the game. Needless to say however, the next time you see a player change a referee’s mind, make sure you DVR it and show all your friends. A moment like that may be bigger than winning the Stanley Cup.