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No goal is a call made by referees in various goal-scoring sports (football, hockey, lacrosse, etc.) to indicate that a goal has not been legally scored. While such a call can be the logical result of the ball or puck never entering the goal during a goal-scoring opportunity, the more common context for this terminology is when the referee disallows an apparent goal, i.e. when the ball or puck has entered the goal, but the score does not count as a score due to some foul or infraction.
Because the decision often depends on a subjective assessment by the referee, and especially if the score might be critical, such calls can be hotly contested. For fans of one of the teams involved, it may thus refer to a goal that was actually disallowed, or one that in their opinion should have been disallowed, but was not. As a result, in recent years many professional sports leagues have introduced rules allowing for certain calls to be subject to video review automatically, or at the referee's discretion or because of a coach's challenge.
In the NHL a goal may be called a no goal for the following reasons:
According to the NLL rulebook (Rule 55: No Goal) a goal may be disallowed under the following conditions: