One of the hottest items of debate all throughout the season was the newly introduced offside challenge, allowing coaches to ask for a video review of a goal to see if the opposing team carried the puck in onside. While in theory it makes sense—any goal scored because of a blown offside call can greatly swing the outcome of a game—in reality it became something of a circus. Referees were taking increasingly long periods to determine whether a player was on or offside, with things like skate blades barely touching the ice in dispute.
There were some who believed the challenges should be removed altogether, others who wanted the NHL to go to a sort of NFL endzone type plane that a player would have to break (as in, if any part of his body was above the blue line he would be considered onside) and still more that thought it was fine and just needed to have a limit in length of review. Instead, the NHL has decided to institute a new penalty for an incorrect challenge. According to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet, if a coach challenges a goal and fails, his team will immediately be given a two-minute penalty.
It seems as though this will have one of two outcomes. Either coaches will avoid challenging plays entirely, afraid of putting their teams in an even worse hole, or they will delay the ensuing faceoff enough to get their own team to look at it before deciding to challenge. That’s the same problem the MLB faced when it instituted video review, eventually leading to another rule that made managers challenge within a certain period of time.
As we’ve reported before, the league will also remove the ability to call a timeout after an icing and will be cracking down on slashes to the hands and body. Last year saw many incidents where players were injured on a slash to the gloves, including when Sidney Crosby chopped off a piece of Marc Methot’s finger. How the league intends to further penalize these is still unclear.
Those are 2 big rule changes. wow
What does the last 2 sentences have to do with the article?
Penalizing a team for challenging an offside is ridiculous. The replay system in the NHL is inadequate to begin with. Often officials make a judgement call and this now puts the officials at the center of the game.
This is one of the STUPIDEST things the NHL has ever come up with.
Half of the time the call SHOULD be reversed but isn’t because they defer and don’t want to overturn the refs blown calls. And now you are going to give a team that already just got jobbed by the refs a penalty on top of it?
That’s moronic.
The solution to the offsides issue is to ONLY use full speed video. No slow motion. Without slow motion, only the obvious offsides will be overturned and thus, only the obvious offsides will be challenged.
I would like to see a rule when a team who pulls a goalie late in the game for an extra skater is called for icing, they aren’t allowed to put the goalie back in. Never have figured out why they can. The rule says a team can’t make any substitutions after any icing with the exception of an injury.
Usually the team pulling their own goalie does not often take an icing – the team defending (who definitely has the goalie playing) is more likely to ice. Still, the rule prohibiting substitution on icing does not matter regards to the game situation. Good point!
So essentially the team who challenges an offside will be penalized for a bad challenge… what if after review the ruling on the ice stands instead of being confirmed?
LOL they should get a power play if they are correct
Do they have stands and confirmed? I watch Bruins games here and then but haven’t seen enough to hear that language difference.
They should’ve just gone to the end zone plane with cameras directly down the line on both sides. So much simpler.
Here’s a crazy idea, let the refs call it. If they miss it they miss it. Was the game really struggling because of missed offsides calls? It’s certainly made worse due to the circus this garbage has created.
It’s ridiculous to be watching frame by frame whether a skate blade is barely scraping the ice or not when the blurry blob of the puck is maybe kinda over the line. If you can’t see it in real 1x speed the offsides calls should stand.
If they’re going to keep this stuff up the least they could do is allow goals after bogus quick whistles from out of position refs stand.
I’d rather see them change the offside rule. If the players foot is in the air, but is behind the line, then he should be onside.
I get that goals off of a missed offsides aren’t good, but the hair splitting they were doing was ridiculous and totally out of the spirit of hockey. Unless it’s obvious and the goal was in short sequence to the missed call they shouldn’t shoot down goals.