The symmetry is almost perfect.
In the history of the NHL’s foray into the realm of replay review, two moments stood out as important milestones that pointed to our ultimate direction. The most recent occurred in 2013, when Colorado center Matt Duchene scored while about a mile offside.
To this day, the show remains widely misunderstood. The linesman did not ignore the fact that Duchenne was offside; instead, he believed the Nashville Predators had directed the puck back into their own zone, which would negate the offside call. But the optics are terrible. Everything about this game looked wrong, including Duchenne’s muted celebration. He knew he had gotten away with it, and so did everyone watching. Ultimately, the confusion and frustration surrounding such glaring missed calls centered on a seemingly simple solution: Why don’t we do replay review of these games?
Now that we’ve done it, it sucks, but keep the thought in mind. Because for another critical moment we have to go back even further. It’s the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals and Game 6 goes into triple overtime. Won the Cup.
Hull’s skate was clearly in the crease, which for almost all of the past four years has meant easy no-goal calls thanks to the cookie-cutter rules we all hate. But this time, officials did not suspend the review and did not release any news. Hull scored, the celebrations began and next thing you know, Gary Bettman was on the field with the Stanley Cup while fans around the world watched the replays , and trying to figure out how a goal that we were sure had been denied 100 times before happened now.
The game is also misunderstood, albeit mostly by the NHL. One explanation for the crease rule from the 1990s was to allow players to be in the crease while in possession of the puck, which is what Hull City did. There was reportedly a memo about such a match weeks before Hull City’s goal, although no one thought to mention it to fans. But none of that matters, because the apparent lack of any formal review will be the final straw for a rule that clearly doesn’t work. That summer, the NHL abandoned the crease rule, one of the few examples in the Bettman era of the league admitting a mistake and taking action to correct it.
The symmetry is almost perfect. It’s really a bit too perfect. Because now, all these years later, we have another rematch debate involving the Dallas Stars. Again, it’s about the players in the crease. It was Game 6 from overtime again, and the Stars were trying to end the series just like that infamous goal in 1999.
Who is the middleman in all this? Our old friend Matt Duchenne.
If you somehow missed it, this is the play in question. It’s Friday night or early Saturday morning, depending on where you are. Midway through the first overtime period, Mason Marchment appeared to score the series-winning goal. But the referees on the ice immediately emphasized the point and (to their credit) even explained why to the crowd: contact in the blue paint, no goal.
And then we all watched the replay and…oh.
In front is No. 95 Duchenne. He was covering Colorado goalie Alexander Georgiev and then made some contact with defender Kyle Makar, pushing Duchenne closer. At some point, the contact with Georgiev was so slight that he ended up out of position and unable to stop Marchment’s shot.
Is this goalie interference? You know what to do now – no one knows, none of us understand the rules, they’re flipping a coin, etc. After a few minutes, it’s possible to master 90% of it, but at this point, people seem to like to feign ignorance.
In this case, everything comes down to whether Duchenne is in the crease and close. Based on the replays we’ve seen, that doesn’t appear to be the case for him. Maybe he’ll make contact when Makar arrives, but it will be a case of the defense forcing the offense into the crease. To me, this goal looked like it should have been important, although both sides had their reasons for it. But on-ice calls are not the goal, the league keeps pushing back on that and it seems to be happening more and more often this season, which is exactly what the rulebook says we should be doing. So we’re in that scary 10%, but we’re not sure. There is also a series coming online.
Eventually, the word settled. The call on the ice stood. no target. To be fair, most fans watching the game seemed to disagree. One thing that happens when you’re walking around like some kind of self-proclaimed expert writing guides for controversial rules is that fans love to send you their thoughts when these calls happen. My unscientific investigation suggests that you think the league’s judgment is wrong, and by a very large amount (though certainly not unanimously). The vast majority of you believe the stars have been robbed.
The best thing you can say about the call is that it ultimately didn’t matter because Duchenne himself scored in both overtimes to end the series. Parker doesn’t lie, and stuff like that. It was a tough result for the Avalanche, but probably a lucky one for the league, which ended up with a controversial scoreless game, but not one that would become infamous.
No harm done, right? Maybe.
Looking at the big picture, the right team wins and we can all move on. But we shouldn’t do this. Because that’s clearly the message the game is giving us. Come on, is this Matt Duchene in overtime of Game 6 of the Dallas Stars playoff series? The hockey gods couldn’t be more evident here. They actually put a giant flashing neon sign on the ice that said “Fixed Replay.”
So let’s do this. Let’s fix the replay system in the best, easiest way possible: get rid of it.
That’s it. That’s the answer, folks. Yes, there are other ways we can do this that can make huge improvements to the current mess of a system. I came up with some of these ideas myself. But why settle for doing a little better when we can solve this problem once and for all?
Throw it away. Throw it away. No more replay reviews for interference or offside. It’s time to do what the league did in 1999 and look at the writing on the wall.This time, we even have a chance to do it forward The inevitable disaster would ruin the Stanley Cup Final.
The goalie interference rule isn’t as complicated as you might think, but it lends itself well to replay review because nearly all of the various contingencies are subjective. Was the contact accidental? Does it prevent the goalkeeper from playing positionally? Will he have time to recover and reset? All of this falls into a gray area of official opinion. Yet we still use the excuse of “getting it right” to stop the game from doing long-term reviews, searching and scanning for a freeze frame that everyone can agree on. We can never find it. Instead, we ended up making a decision that no one agreed with. One fan base thinks it’s obvious to them, another thinks it’s obvious to them, and everyone else shrugs, not entirely sure, no matter how many angles we get.
If your system is built because you have to do it well, but no one thinks you do, then your system is broken. Get rid of it.
Then there’s offside, a play that’s objective at least in theory. You crossed the line, or you didn’t, and unless this is one of those freak plays where we have to argue about possession, we should be able to find a freeze frame that we can all agree on. We did it! Occasionally. But most of the time, we don’t. The angle isn’t quite right, or the lens isn’t clear enough, or the final result is too close to judge. Looking at it all, the entry we’re reviewing likely occurred before the goal, perhaps with some changes of possession in between. What are we doing here?
We built this system to capture reruns of the original Duchenne error, and more than a decade later, we haven’t had another one happen. Instead, we have video coaches monitoring the entrance to each area, looking for get-out-of-jail-free cards. Our line officials clearly let close games continue because they knew a replay was lurking. Some of us changed course and completely disengaged from the game, getting caught up in the technical details that determined Game 7.
Through it all, a generation of fans was taught not to get too excited about a goal because you never know when a random replay will take it off the board. An offense-hungry league has told viewers that some goals must be expunged from the record, just because. Every exciting moment is followed by a shot of a listless coach staring down at his iPad. Countless games came to a standstill. The excitement left the building.
It’s all about getting things done, No one thinks we’re actually doing.
Everyone is angry all the time. Literally every fan thinks the Toronto Situation Room is biased against them personally. Everyone pretends they don’t understand distractions. No one can squint hard enough to know which blue line pixel we should focus on. We were all yelling at each other constantly. The league’s own broadcasters accused referees of betting on games. It all became a competition to see who could be the angriest at the loudest volume all the time. So tired.
No one thinks this works. But we firmly believe we have to keep doing it because what if we miss something when we go back?
Well, what if it actually happened? You old fans: Do you remember how many times you missed an offside call and got angry? Of course, Leon Stickle, that was 1980. What about goalie interference? Is this a game you spent a lot of time thinking about before replaying it?
Not really. Instead, we all understand that sometimes the odds are stacked against you and sometimes it goes against your team, and that’s the life of a sports fan. That’s not to say we didn’t get angry, complain, or cry about it for about 30 years. But we understand that’s how sports work, and we didn’t expect the entire game to stop several times a night just so we could find a frame to obsess over while keeping most of the calls right but some wrong, because that’s sports.
I’m not saying we give up on replays entirely. There are elements of the game that work perfectly and exactly as they were intended. Definitely reserve it to determine if time has expired before a goal. Use this to determine if the puck crossed the line, as long as you understand that sometimes you can’t be sure. If you insist, you can continue to use it to achieve your goals, although this won’t always work.
But can an offside comment be accurate to a millimeter? No. Absolutely not. Because right now we’re not doing that, at least not in the way we promised. We argue more, not less. We’re not making anyone feel better about NHL officiating. We don’t need to do this anymore.
I know it. You know. The hockey gods know it too, which is why they hit us right in the eye with a decidedly exaggerated message on Friday night. This time, they were even kind enough to do it in a way that didn’t cost the team the series or cause controversy that we’ll remember years from now. Next time, we may not be so lucky.
Duchenne has us in a tough spot. Maybe he can be our rescuer too. Eliminate replay review, accept that there will be calls that don’t go your team’s way, and live with it. As we discovered in 1999, this option isn’t perfect, but it’s far better than the inevitable alternative.
(Referee Dan O’Rourke Photo: Klaus Anderson/Getty Images)
