WATCH: Referees cost Red Wings goal with phantom penalty call

NHL referees are human. They make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes are worse than others. The men in stripes made one of the really bad variety in Washington Wednesday night that had an immediately negative impact on the Detroit Red Wings.

Here's how it played out.

Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby went back behind his net to play a puck. Red Wings forward Luke Glendening was also back there. Holtby got rid of it to the nearest outlet. As Holtby attempted to go back to his net, he ended up tripping and falling down. Glendening was still in the vicinity, but didn't touch Holtby.

Meanwhile, the Red Wings had gotten control of the puck and Drew Miller put a shot past Holtby who hadn't quite recovered from his trip and fall. The goal was immediately waved off by Mike Leggo and a penalty was called on Glendening.

It is pretty clear that Leggo didn't see what happened, otherwise he couldn't have possibly made that call. He guessed. Officials aren't supposed to guess. Even though there are two sets of eyes out there among the guys wearing the orange arm bands, they can't see everything, but their job isn't to try to put the pieces together when a player goes down. If they see it, they call it. That's all they can do.

It ended up costing the Red Wings a goal. They've had a hard enough time scoring those with any amount of regularity that getting one waved off is especially galling.

Mistakes happen, but this was an especially bad one.