“Ultimately I feel as if they should just take the rule out,” said Connor McDavid on Tuesday, in reference to the coach’s challenge for offsides.
McDavid was a little upset after the Oilers’ loss to the Nashville Predators. Late in the third period, the Oilers thought they got the game-tying goal from Mark Letestu, but it was ruled that Jujhar Khaira was offside.
It essentially took slowing the replay down frame-by-frame to see it, but Khaira did barely lift his skate off the ice a fraction of a second before the puck fully crossed the blue line. By the letter of the law, he was offside. By the spirit of the law, it felt all kinds of wrong.
“The number of calls that are a millimeter offside, 45 seconds before the play,” continued McDavid, “it doesn’t have very much of an effect on the goal itself. I think fans want to see offence.”
It was a similar decision to ones we’ve seen in Canucks games this season. Thomas Vanek had a goal overturned when it was determined his skate was just off the ice on a zone entry. Even though in real time it looked perfectly kosher, the close-up cameras along the blue line showed the tiniest gap between his skate blade and the ice.
Offside is such a binary rule — either you preceded the puck into the zone or you didn’t — that there’s no room for nuance for these cases where the player clearly gained no advantage by entering the zone early. Khaira lifting his skate minutely off the ice had no effect on the goal, same as Vanek barely lifting his skate.
It’s enough to make some, like McDavid, want to do away with the coach’s challenge altogether and it’s not hard to understand why. The rule can only take away goals; it can never add goals. If a linesman calls a play offside that isn’t, the potential goal that might have been scored off that rush will never occur.
Others suggest something less drastic. Darren Dreger passed along a suggestion from a “trusted hockey man” that reviews should only use the same feeds that the viewers at home can see on TV. I guess it doesn’t matter if you’re wrong as long as nobody else knows you’re wrong.
Idea from trusted hockey man. Dump blue line cameras for offside reviews. TV feeds only. If inconclusive, call on ice stands. No long delays
— Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) January 10, 2018
The problem with removing the coach’s challenge entirely is that sometimes it works exactly as intended, catching obvious offsides that escaped the notice of the linesman in the moment.
While there had been calls for a coach’s challenge before, Matt Duchene’s goal (also against the Predators) in February of 2013 cemented it, even if it took some time to implement: there needed to be a video review for offside calls. Duchene wasn’t just offside, he was way offside.
Duchene was about three feet offside, with the only possible explanation for the non-call being that the linesman though the Predators had passed it back into their own zone, though there’s no explanation for why they might have done that. A quick video review would have easily determined that they intentionally played the puck into their own zone.
That is, in fact, what happened during the Canucks’ game against the Leafs.
Like in that 2013 game, the Leafs were blatantly, obviously offside. The puck clearly came out over the blueline then came back in, with a couple Leafs well inside the Canucks’ zone. The issue? The linesman thought Brock Boeser had passed the puck back into his own zone.
A moment (and an embarrassing flubbed catch by Jacob Markstrom) later, the puck was in the net.
Travis Green challenged the call on the ice and the video review clearly showed that the puck went off Morgan Rielly’s skate and back into the zone. The goal was rightly disallowed, because it was obvious. No one could dispute the call. This wasn’t a case of millimeters, but several feet (and one skate).
So, those kinds of calls have to be retained. You can’t do away with offside reviews entirely, like McDavid suggests.
Unless…
Unless you get rid of offsides. There’s a growing group of hockey fans that think the NHL should eliminate or modify the offsides rule, thereby opening up the game to more offence and cutting down on the number of unnecessary whistles.
It’s not really that crazy. The offside rule was originally codified in 1930 and it was explicitly designed to limit scoring. At this point, the NHL should be eager to do whatever it takes to increase scoring, so why not revisit an old rule designed to limit it.
I particularly like this suggestion from Dom Luszczyszyn of The Hockey News: treat it like over-and-back in basketball.
Once the zone is gained, maintaining it for the sake of offense is a very important part of the game that shouldn’t be messed with. It allows the defense an outlet to escape pressure (and make line changes) and forces the offense to work the puck around in a space that’s relevant to scoring. Seeing a team constantly regroup with possession because there was no blueline to maintain wouldn’t help much as one of hockey’s best assets is the constant changes in possession. It also could just as easily turn into an offensive zone trap with cycling and we’re back to square one.
With that being said, eliminating offsides on entries feels like the best bet. Enter when you please, but once the puck is in the zone it has to stay there. If it comes out, it’s the same situation as it is now: everyone has to clear the zone before anyone else can enter.
It’s a big change, but it would be a welcome one. And we wouldn’t have to worry anywhere near as much about whether someone’s skate blade is millimeters off the ice.
