New NHL Coach's Offside Challenge Facing Scrutiny

With seemingly multiple good goals being challenged and taken away on a nightly basis in the NHL, it’s hard to find a lot of value in the new coach’s offside challenge.

The large majority of challenges are so close, a skate an inch off the ice or across the blue line, that the negatives – slowing the game down, taking the flow away and lowering scoring in a league trying to increase goals – seem to override the occasional positive of reversing egregious mistakes. Unnecessary challenges to too close to call plays are also taking the game out of the hands of referees and players on the ice, and putting it into those of coaches – something akin to late timeouts called in football after field goals have already been made.

The Bruins had two goals and nearly a third taken away by challenges in recent games, including a March 5 goal on a beautiful shot by Torey Krug that was overturned after replays initially looked inconclusive but later showed Loui Ericksson’s skate hovering slightly off the ice. It cost the B’s a win. “We’re not all, I guess, 100% on board with some of that stuff, but you’ve got to live with it,” Boston coach Claude Julien told CSNNE. “We always compare it to other calls that we’ve had. I guess we don’t always see consistency.”

The offside challenge is being thrown too frequently on plays that would normally just be goals. Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock seemed to question its merits after Toronto had a goal taken away in a recent offside challenge but won the game anyway, and two goals he challenged earlier were reversed. “An offside that you miss by a fraction of an inch that caused a goal, a goal that had nothing really to do with being offside, does it matter?” he told The Star. “I don’t know if it matters. Should those two goals that we called back really count? I thought they were good plays. I thought they should count. That’s just me.”

"An offside that you miss by a fraction of an inch that caused a goal, a goal that had nothing really to do with being offside, does it matter? I thought they were good plays. I thought they should count."  

 - Toronto Coach Mike Babcock

In a game last night between the Capitals and Blues, Washingon coach Barry Trotz threw an offside challenge at what looked like a beautiful goal off a rush from St. Louis rookie defenseman Colton Parayko. Video replays showed it was too close to reverse and the view obstructed, so the Blues kept the goal and went on to win 4-0. “I thought the second goal, you know, changed the whole deal,” Trotz said on The Washington Post.

The NHL Board of Governors approved the rule change last June, allowing coaches to challenge goals they think may have been offside as well as those where the goalie may have been interfered with. A team must have their timeout available in order to employ a challenge, and will lose it if the call on the ice stands.

"The reason we instituted it was so that we could get the egregious calls particularly right, ones that everybody alive sees and says, 'This is the wrong call, it's a screw-up,'" said Mike Murphy, NHL vice-president of hockey operations on NHL.com in October. "You want to use video replay to get egregious plays, not close calls where it's 50-50. (Coaches) can live with some of the close plays that happen in our sport. It's what make our sport so great. It travels so fast."

But that’s not what has been happening. Some coaches seem to take advantage to challenge even borderline calls over minutiae that could go either way while also leveraging the time it takes to review the play to give players a rest.

“There’s a few (challenges) you throw out there you’re not betting your life on,” Carolina coach Bill Peters told The Star. “If it gets the call right, I think it’s good. “There are a lot of times too you don’t know which way it’s going to go. On the offside, we’re getting down to: ‘Is his foot in the air? Is the toe of his skate touching?’”

According to Yahoo Sports, through January 22, the offside  challenge had been used 55 times with 22 overturned.

Borderline challenges can impact not only the outcome of games, but momentum as the hard work and skill that results in goals is put on pause. Criticisms arise from fans when coaches begin to act like a 7^th player and take that flow and excitement away by increasingly challenging calls that are too close to call. And do we really want a game that devolves into a modern version of the sci-fi epic Rollerball where backstage video reviewers control every step of the game rather than players?

The goalie interference challenges also appear to be having a less than optimal effect. “I feel like guys are almost taking advantage of crashing the net more,” Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier added on The Star. “Or the defense is pushing the guy into the goalie. It’s good and bad. I think it slows down the game quite a bit, but it saves a few goals, too.”

The coach’s challenge was reviewed by the NHL in mid-March and will be tweaked in the playoffs to include ice-level cameras on the blueline to enhance the video review process. “The coach’s challenge hasn’t exactly been a hit in its first season of use,” according to NESN. “During the regular season, the majority of the cameras referees have access to are positioned far above the ice, often making bang-bang offside calls incredibly difficult to judge.”

But the tweak may not go far enough in fixing the rule and allowing for the natural flow and speed of the game, unless all coaches live up to the spirit it was intended and only challenge obvious big missed calls rather than 50-50 ones. The rule further runs counter to other recent NHL changes favoring offense and entertainment value, such as elimination of two-line offsides, reduced goalie pads, increased offensive zone area, and establishment of obstruction penalties, shootouts and 3-on-3 overtimes.