Three days of Playoff action until a stupid, ill-advised, non-nonsensical and unnecessary rule ruined a perfectly good game.
With the game tied at one, late in the third period of an intense game that was, up until then, the epitome of what a Playoff game should be, the Blues scored and seemingly took the lead.
It was exactly the kind of thing you're looking for: a big moment. The Blues, a slight underdog (maybe?) even though they're opening up at home, if only because of the Hawks recent winning history, get a goal from their best player and one of the NHL's biggest superstars and potentially take the series back to Chicago up 2-0.
In a league starved for scoring, the last thing anyone needs is goals called back for arbitrary reasons. And this was the most arbitrary reversal of a call I have ever seen.
Jori Lehtera was off-side by a fraction of a fraction of an inch. The goal was overturned because of slavish devotion to a rule that doesn't even need to exist. And it was only overturned because Chicago put up a hail-mary coach's challenge - literally no one could see if that was offside or not with the naked eye.
And if you can't tell, then it doesn't matter and isn't within the spirit of the rule.
The rule was put into place so that goals that are ten feet offside don't count. Matt Duchene's goal shouldn't count because he is way, way, way offside and by breaking a rule of the game, he gave himself a ridiculous advantage he shouldn't have gotten.
In the case of last night's goal, that didn't happen. The Blackhawks were not put at a disadvantage because of a fractional offside. It makes no sense to not allow a goal like this.
It took what was probably the best (no probably about it actually) moment of this year's Playoffs so far and the NHL's ridiculous and unnecessary new rules ruined it. Momentum? Absolutely gone. Any excitement in the game? Gone.
The game was everything you could ask out of a hockey game, and then suddenly there's this big long stupid review that takes forever over the most pedantic interpretation of a rule that shouldn't even exist.
The Coach's Challange is the worst thing to ever be introduced to the NHL since 1999 when their other stupid video replay rule for goalie interference ruined the deciding game of the Stanley Cup Final. So really, who didn't see this coming?
Even taking away the fact that it's incredibly stupid to disallow a goal that you need high-definition video and freeze-frame technology to determine that the guy was a hair's width offside, just the delay alone makes it stupid, since it sucked out any energy the game had.
Then, just to top it off, second later, the Hawks score (because of course they will when the other team is so deflated and angered by one of the stupidest, most ridiculous things to ever happen to them) on a goal that while I agree it should have counted, was certainly more worthy of being called back than the Blue's goal that actually was.
Like the game needed another twenty minutes stoppage, but at least that goal was worthy of some controversy, since crashing the net and the goalie takes away the other team's fair chance at preventing a goal far more than a fractional offside call does.
I mean, I couldn't have written it better: one goal is called off for reasons that make zero sense, and then seconds later a goal that is far worse and might actually be legitimately illegal turns out to count. The juxtaposition was like instant comeuppance to the NHL for inventing this untenable and embarrassing situation.
In conclusion, the Coach's Challenge is a cure worse than the disease. The Matt Duchene goal was a one in a million occurrence. In general, if you can't tell something's offside just by looking, then it doesn't really matter. Our obsession with having calls be 100% accurate is ruining the game.
It is far better to blow a call occasionally than have any kind of long stoppage to the game. It is also far better to blow a call than to overturn goals on pedantic interpretations of the rules.
Who cares? The game is played by humans and humans make mistakes. As long as the refs are neutral, why does it even matter if there is an occasional bad call?
Ten blown calls aren't worth what happened last night.
The Blues should be up 2-0.
The Coach's Challenge needs to be eliminated completely. Not refined, not adjusted, gone.
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