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Leave goalie interference reviews out of NHL referees’ hands

Leave goalie interference reviews out of NHL referees’ hands

The NHL’s general managers are going to revisit video reviews of goalie interference calls, and one assumes that would include adding coaches’ challenges to limit them.

It’s something that needs to happen, given how many baffling and inconsistent calls we see each week, and it needs to happn because those calls frequently determine whether or not a goal is added to the tally.

The timing’s right for it too, given that the NHL has camera technology that can allow us to measure the whisker length on Brent Burns’ face. (Spoiler: Some are longer than a garden variety salamander.)

What doesn’t need to happen is for video reviews to fall into the referees’ hands, which is a “happy medium” that’s been discussed as a way to appease those who want oversight on controversial calls and those worried that calling up to the War Room will make games excruciatingly long or that on-ice officials’ power will be further diminished by calls overturned off-ice.

Besides, the NHL has already endorsed referee conferences to overturn calls; why not add goalie interference?

Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet wrote about that potential move on Friday:

What if there was some kind of tablet in the penalty box the group could use in their on-ice meetings? Could it be programmed to show the various replay angles so that the NHL doesn’t have to expand review, simply enhance the officials’ ability to decide on plays they are already allowed to discuss?

During Flames/Flyers, instead of huddling for 10 minutes and going by memory, they could grab the tablet and see what happened. During Canucks/Sharks, same deal. They are also allowed to chat about pucks over the glass and high sticks. Decisions in all of these situations can be improved/clarified. If you don’t want full-out replay reviews, this intermediate step alleviates problems.

A few reasons I’m not down with that:

1. There’s a reason we have a War Room. It’s because they have all the angles, all the tech, all the huge television screens that are able to tell, as best they can, whether a puck crossed the line or there was a kicking motion or the other nuances they rule on. We don’t care if the tablet’s got a retina display or if there’s a monitor; we’ll opt for the editing bay.

2. There’s a reason we have a War Room. It acts as a check and balance for the on-ice officials because the rulings handed down are seen as coming from the NHL hierarchy. They’re the highest court. There is no appeal. So the last thing we need are the on-ice officials to potentially blow the same call twice, which may seem totally outlandish until we all realize it’ll probably happen.

3. There’s a reason we have a War Room. It enforces the agreed upon standards for some subjective calls, like kicked-in goals. The same should be done for goalie interference, as the primary problem with these rulings now is there is no uniformity.

(My drinkin’ buddy Tim Peel, for example, appears to have taken the NHL standard for goalie interference, used Google Translate to turn it into gibberish and then made his own rulebook out of it.)

So at the very least the NHL could establish some standards if it allowed the War Room to rule on goalie interference, but that’s the core issue with expanding replay: There’s a fear that the call itself is so subjective, so nuanced and so clouded (hello, goalie embellishment) that the ruling on the ice should just stand, rather than have the NHL try to formalize a policy about them like the Dept. of Player Safety does with dangerous hits.