A challenge to NHL officials; expand process for disputing goals
No one can blame Florida Panthers general manager Dale Tallon for leaving Toronto last Tuesday scowling mad.
His team was on the wrong end of a grossly unjust call in their loss to the host Maple Leafs at Air Canada Centre. With the score knotted at 1-1 late in the third period, Colton Orr skated through the crease and pushed Florida goalie Scott Clemmensen just as a shot from Leafs forward Tim Brent streaked towards the net.
The infraction was so blatant that the play could just as easily have been distributed on a referee’s training video as a clear illustration of what constitutes goaltender interference. Yet inexplicably, neither arm-banded official – Stephen Walkom or Francis Charron – detected Orr’s misdeed as the puck deflected off the Leafs’ pugilist into the net for the eventual game-winning goal.
Not even Leafs head coach Ron Wilson could defend the result. “Colton took the goalie out and it should have been a penalty,” said Wilson. “Let’s be honest. But they didn’t see it, so you take what you can get.”
Even Colin Campbell, NHL Vice President of Operations, later admitted that a mistake was made. “It’s quite obvious if they had the chance to see it again, you would hope the call would be made that it was interference on a goaltender,” Campbell told the Miami Herald.
“This happens. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s certainly a call you wish was made differently.”
In the high-tempo game of hockey where several mitigating factors influence the play, the men in the striped shirts are inevitably subject to error.
Yet with the evolution of video review and its prominence in every NHL arena, the events of last Tuesday night serve as a call to expand Rule 38.4 of the rulebook, which lists the Situations Subject to Video Review.
Goaltender interference is not currently listed as one of the eight criteria for an apparent goal to be scrutinized by the video goal judge. With the blue paint in front of today’s netminders being as crowded as Toronto subway trains, it’s time for this oversight to be corrected.
The officials’ miscue in the Leafs-Panthers game wasn’t the only slip-up that recently occurred on Toronto’s home rink. Two Mondays ago in a game won by the New York Islanders, the Leafs’ Colby Armstrong fired a shot that trickled along the goal line as a hapless Dwayne Roloson could only watch.
Video officials correctly refrained from awarding a goal in the absence of evidence that the puck completely crossed the line. Yet the overhead cameras also showed footage of the Islanders’ John Tavares grabbing the puck in the crease to help prevent a goal. The correct call on that play – a penalty shot for Toronto – was missed.
To minimize the potential for future misgivings, the NHL needs to adopt a coach’s challenge system, similar to the process already implemented in football and tennis. Under such a system, each coach would be given one opportunity per game to dispute the on-ice official’s call on an apparent goal.
In the event that the on-ice call is upheld, the disputing coach’s team would be assessed a bench minor penalty for delay of game, the same consequence enforced by the rule that currently exists for challenging stick measurements.
If a coach’s challenge system is to be introduced to hockey, its implementation should be structured to cause minimal disruption to the flow of the game. Unlike football and tennis, which are sports constructed of discreet plays with frequent stoppages, hockey is a dynamic sport often filled with long stretches of play without whistles.
Thus, to keep the game moving at a brisk pace, the use of a challenge system should be limited to calls involving disputed goals only, and not offside, icing, or penalties.
Even with a coach’s challenge, the calls won’t be always right.
However the technology exists to be right more often than being wrong.
So why not use it?
Rob Del Mundo is the author of Blue And White Beat, and is a regular columnist at TMLfans.ca
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Why not use it? Because you immediately strip the referee of any credibility he has the second a call is overturned. You also embarrass him in front of 18,000 people (6000 in Phoenix.
). That’s hard for anyone to shake off. For the rest of that game, that ref is subjected to a lot verbal abuse from the players about his competence.
The league went to the 2 referee system so that they would have an extra set of eyes on the ice to limit the number of calls missed. If the refs they have out there now can’t make the calls, get rid of them and get guys who can. Hockey is a fast passed, emotional game played by and officiated by people. Mistakes, on both sides, will be made. Don’t automate the game anymore with more video replay.
I don’t think the referees would lose any more credibility by introducing a coach’s challenge, particularly if it’s used at most once per game, and in goal-related reviews only. Citing the Orr/Clemmensen incident as an example, Walkom and Charron are already wearing goat horns for missing the call. Everybody saw it; the damage is already done. Colin Campbell has already called them out. A challenge system at least offers the opportunity to get some of those missed calls correct.