A challenge with consequences
Asking to review a goal for offside was tough enough without the risk of a penalty
The only question about the biggest rule change for the 2017-18 NHL season — a delay-of-game penalty if a team loses an offside challenge — is whether it will be tougher on head coaches or their video-review underlings. The NHL decided over the summer that coaches were taking advantage of their ability to challenge goals scored after a missed offside. If a coach lost his challenge, the team lost its timeout. That was as far as the repercussions went.
The league introduced the challenge in 2015-16, along with one for goaltender interference, to combat blatantly missed calls. But it ended up taking the flow out of the game and the focus off the players. There were 131offside challenges in 2016-17, a 32-per-cent increase from 2015-16. TV commentators were left squirming about whether a blade was on the ice at the blue line, therefore onside, or just off the ice, therefore offside, when a puck carrier entered the zone. Indeed, 44 challenges were the result of a skate off the ice.
This year, if a coach loses an offside challenge, his team will be penalized two minutes for delay of game.
“You have got to think about it,” Leafs coach Mike Babcock said. “You are trying to get it right and the game is on the line.
“It is going to be a tough decision. Can you imagine the heat it is going to put on the poor guys in the video room? You have no idea.”
It sounds like we know whom Babcock will blame if the wrong call is made. But the idea is closer to the original intent of the challenge: Get rid of blatant bad calls — ones that can be quickly noticed — and let the too-close-to-call ones go.
“It was already nerve-racking of last year without having that (penalty),” Ottawa Senators coach Guy Boucher said. “You have 30 seconds, but by the time you get to the right frame, you have about 15 seconds. And the refs come to you.
“Imagine it’s the last moments of the game and all of a sudden they score and it’s a one-goal game and you are almost sure but you are not (totally), you call it, and it does not work out, and you get a penalty and they score and you lose the game.”
Or the opposite happens: The call goes unchallenged, but replays later show it was offside.
You are going to feel like you don’t want to call any of them unless you are 150-per-cent sure,” Boucher said.
Coaches and officials have talked over the new rule. An official recommended Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill continue to call for it like he has been, given penalty kills have an overwhelmingly successful kill rate, at about 85 per cent.
“I said come stand in my shoes 15 per cent of the time,” Blashill said. “It puts a lot of onus on the coaches. It gives the second-guessers another chance to second-guess.”