PITTSBURGH — Gary Bettman's Stanley Cup Final state-of-the-league address is sort of like an annual pot luck where the same dishes show up each year, with minor alterations.
We had our expansion talk (no real details) and our Olympic participation talk (not looking good) and our media property talk (NHL.com and NHL Network are doing great!). There was news, but not a ton, and most of it was similar to stuff we'd heard in 2015.
The best part of the whole exercise is watching Bettman use his rhetorical skills. Let's look at one particular question about the video-replay system, which allows coaches to challenge possible missed offside calls on goals.
Question: At a time when offense is slipping, how is it good for the league to be wiping out goals because of misplaced toenails, and if we’re gonna subscribe to the theory of “let’s get it right,” why hasn’t the league done more to look at a crackdown on hooking (and) interference, which is really the root cause of the offensive decline?
Bettman: First of all, people will debate the latter part of your question. The fact is, the game has never been faster and never been more competitive or entertaining.
That's some big-time lawyer stuff, right off the bat. Dropping "the fact is" before a very obvious set of opinions — terrific. And further, the question was about goal-scoring, not the level of competitiveness. The league does not want officials to call games closely. If they did, they would. The NHL is getting the game it wants, and every answer has be filtered through that bit of reality.
It's something that sits poorly with many, many people, but at this point, it's immutable; the NHL does not want to increase goal-scoring by calling more penalties.
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Then, Bettman worked backwards and addressed the first part of the question; of course, making sure players are onside for goals is a positive thing. There are plenty of other things to complain about — like the lack of interference calls — but there is enough gray space in that realm to make it debatable.
The offside rule, though, isn't debatable. It's one of a super-select few in-game issues that are actually cut-and-dry, so of course they should get it right. Bettman brought up a huge overturned foal from Game 6 of the Eastern Conference final; Jonathan Drouin had scored a goal that would've put the Lightning up 1-0 on Pittsburgh, but he was offside by a toe. Tough luck.
Bettman: The notion that we call back a goal because there’s a toe over the line — the rule is the rule. And I have no doubt that if we didn’t get it right, that the toe was over the line, there would be a lot of screaming about the fact that we got the call wrong.
So if you think back to the Tampa game, where everybody was focused on that offside call, the fact of the matter is everybody in Pittsburgh would’ve been screaming if we didn’t get the call right. Whether or not we use video replay, there are so many cameras that television has that they get to see.
And so, the better question may be: Do you want to have an offside rule? I’m not advocating that we should get rid of the offside rule, but the notion, ‘well, the rule was only violated by a little.’ Either you enforce the rule or you don’t. And if you don’t get it right, and we say, ‘oh, it was only over a little,’ then the other team and its fans and everybody watching the game is gonna say ‘well, how are you enforcing the rules?
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He's right. If nothing else, the coach's challenge system can save the league a headache. Lots of us want the game called more closely, but that's a separate issue. We should just be happy that they're dedicated to getting at least something correct.