NICK'S NOTION - HOCKEY DEBATES

Nick De Cicco

The Shootout

Prior to the 2004-2005 NHL regular season, the players, fans and executives landed in another lockout with a delayed start to the season that brought a lot of changes to the league’s rules and regulations. The most impactful change to the NHL’s process was the introduction of the shootout. Before this lockout, a professional hockey game ended in a tie.

This conclusion was extremely anticlimactic and didn’t excite the paying audiences enough. Looking back at the initial details of the shootout, it was a much better resolution to an NHL game than a tie. It provided the fans with a unique experience that would test the skills of each individual participant, including the goalies.

My issue with the modernization of the NHL shootout is the last point I mentioned above. Hockey was never an individual sport and a conclusion to any game shouldn’t rely on the performance of one particular player or goalie. The additional rules to the shootout including the time limit, no spin-o-rama and constant forward movement provides restrictions.

These restrictions remove very entertaining elements out of a particularly exciting part of the game. Limiting the shooter's puck handling and skating abilities simply doesn’t make sense. The shootout should have been removed years ago and the new overtime systems should have replaced it.

In my opinion, I think a beneficial adjustment would be to make a continuous 3 on 3 overtime until a team scores. The recent success of this overtime structure in the 2022 World Junior Championships should be enough to make a permanent change in the NHL.

The fans’ disappointment from a shootout decision in the Gold Medal game a few World Juniors ago made a swift response to a changed format. This year’s overtime in WJC created a mind-blowing moment for Mason McTavish’s goal line save and a momentous golden goal a few minutes later. The evidence for change is clear. For the sake of the paying fans’ entertainment and advancing the future of skillful hockey players, let’s get rid of the shootout.

Offside Reviews

Since its inception in the 2015-2016 NHL regular season, coaches have been able to use their Coach’s Challenge to review offside plays.

This review has significantly changed the game in recent years and impacted the pace of the matchup. The biggest criticism is that the duration between the challenge and the time that the infraction in question occurred was incredibly long.

This review significantly slows down the game and makes for a judgement call between on-ice and off-ice officials enduring minuscule details. Also, the offside rule has also changed so many times that it’s hard to determine what is or isn’t offside.

In the most recent controversial example, Cale Makar’s goal in the 2022 Western Conference semifinals versus the Edmonton Oilers was called a goal when his teammate was significantly beyond the blue line. Watching it live, I remember thinking it was clearly offside and the review would be extremely short.

After a few minutes of waiting my hockey senses were telling me that the officials were looking for something else. Once the lengthy review finished the call on the ice stood and we had a good goal. Honesty, I was shocked until the intermission crew provided the explanation.

The reasoning behind the decision was that Makar didn’t touch the puck until his winger came back onside. Conversely, I could make the argument that the puck possession was either incidental or purposeful and it shouldn’t matter considering how close Makar’s stick was to the puck, but I digress.

This example from Makar was extremely important to the game and swayed the momentum in Colorado’s favour. With this importance in mind, there are a multitude of scenarios that hold the same principle in the offside rulings and this evidence should bring forth some changes.

The entire Coach’s Challenge concept is incredibly important for the league to ensure the right call is made and keep accountability among officials. For the sake of time, maintaining a highly skilled and fast paced game that every fan enjoys, let’s remove the offside reviews and keep the debates on the ice.