The Toronto Maple Leafs are riding high atop the NHL standings, so what better time to take a break from covering them to discuss what the NHL could do better.
The NHL does a lot of things well - you have to give them credit for adding a new Canadian team (Winnipeg) and finally moving the Coyotes. You have to credit them for going 12 seasons without a work stoppage, for having a product that is much more interesting and fun to watch than it was at the turn of the Century,
But the NHL isn't perfect. It's playoff seeding format is idiotic, the fact that some games are worth three points and some are worth two is even worse and it defies belief that we've just become used to and accepted such a system.
Fighting has to go, and there should be some other tweaks too: game management is a problem, teams that take a lot of penalties tend to also lead the league in power-plays, the amount of cross-checks to the neck that the NHL has no problem with is also an issue.
But one thing stands out above all and needs to be fixed, immediately.
Time to Get Rid of the Stupidest Rule in the History of the NHL
The NHL has allowed offside reviews since 2015-16 and it's time to end them. They are idiotic, unnecessary and a waste of time.
Video review is supposed to make the game better by making it free from human error. As a concept, it's rock solid. In practice, even though the NFL first instituted it in 1986, it needs work.
Video Review makes the calls accurate, but no one ever stopped to ask why accurate calls should be the most important thing. To me, accuracy matters, but 100% accuracy comes at too high of a cost, and I think we should just go back to letting humans make the occasional error.
Since all other calls are subjective, why not let video review be subjective? Instead of involving the refs on the ice, have an official off the ice whose job it is is to watch the game and over-rule the on-ice officials whenever something flagerent happens.
There can be other rules for scoring, but as far as off-sides go, this would be easy to implement.
First, who cares about close calls? Any close call is within the spirit of the rules, so the ref should make the call, and we should live with it. The video judge should only be able to reverse it if a) it's so off-side that a real-speed eyeball can tell easily and it's clear the linesman made an error b) it occurs within 10 seconds of the goal.
This way, a lot more goals would count. Almost all goals overturned by off-side calls are ticky-tak nonsense and not flagerant mistakes. We should ignore those, as well as the goals that get called back after an extended amount of zone time.
This is such an obvious and needed improvement I can't believe it hasn't already happened. As for offsides in general, I don't even think they should exist either (the game dishes out it's own punishment if you ignore defense) but that's a topic for another day.