NHL will discuss offside rule at GM meetings in 2020

By Ty Anderson, 985TheSportsHub.com

The Charlie Coyle non-goal in Montreal may be the straw that breaks the camel's back in regards to the NHL's stance on offside reviews.

A universally-loathed challenge option, the gray area of the offside challenge has become an issue for many, and Coyle's goal highlighted all of it. On what appeared to be a clean entry as Coyle controlled the puck with his skates, a challenge from Canadiens coach Claude Julien deemed that Coyle did not have possession and/or was in ahead of the puck, and wiped away what would've been the go-ahead goal in what ended as a 5-4 loss for the Bruins.

And the view from the NHL, especially in the case of the Coyle goal, is that there's more than one way to enter a zone, and that the league has more than enough skill for us to think that there's only way to establish clear possession.

"I think we're always trying to be progressive and reward offense," NHL senior executive vice president of hockey operations Colin Campbell said. "I think our players are much more talented than the players of the past. I can say that because I was one. But these players, the talent they have now, I think we have to take that into consideration with what they can do with the puck on those possession and control plays on the blue line."

Now, possession is not the only issue with the offside challenge.

Perhaps the biggest issue with the offside challenge is that there's no established time limit to the review process. It seems absolutely absurd that you can enter the zone an inch offside, establish possession for the next minute plus, score a goal, and then have it wiped away because of that aforementioned inch. It's essentially a bailout that a team did not deserve.

My idea is that there needs to be a time limit to the process as a whole. If a goal is scored within 10 seconds of a player's offside entry, and that player had something to do with the goal, then sure, take it away. It played a direct factor in the goal. But if you establish possession in the attacking zone for anything beyond that, the defending team had a chance to deny the opportunity and send the play the other way. So why are you helping the opposition for not knowing how to play defense?

You're taking 'good' goals away when in reality the opponent had more than a fair chance to deny it from ever happening.

"There's a lot of nice goals scored on a foot in the air that you take back," Campbell admitted. "We had three managers who spoke to it and felt that maybe it's time to readdress it."

It's not hard to imagine that the Bruins, who have had numerous goals wiped off the board this season due to offside challenges, would protest any sort of change to the rule at this point.