Follow @james_tanner123 Tonight the Leafs and Coyotes will engage in a vicious death-match of NHL titans. The Leafs will put their 1-4-2 record on the line against Arizona's 4-3-1 mark.
Both teams are coming off decent games: the Leafs threw over 50 shots at Carey Price and the Canadiens on Saturday (though they lost) and the Coyotes defeated the Senators 4-1 on the back of an excellent Mikkel Boedker hat-trick.
For the Coyotes, this is a great chance to go 2-2 on a fairly easy east-coast road trip.
They lost to NJ in OT so at least they got a point, but then they lost a winnable game to the Rangers when the wingers couldn't clear the puck and Mike Smith ended up making a brutal give away on the winner. Then again, in that game they also lost because they let in their fourth (!) short-handed goal of the year.
They talked about sticking with Boedker at the point on the PP, but they seem to have changed their mind since OEL played 100% of the 4 minutes in PP time they had against the Sens and Murphy (40 seconds) and Stone split the rest.
I think it's for the best, since 4 goals is a good amount to allow short-handed for a whole season, but not in seven games.
Tonight, the newly recalled Tyler Gaudet (Plachta didn't play during his call up before going back down, so it seems weird that Gaudet would get the call) will likely play in the place of Antoine Vermette who missed his first game in a long, long time the other night. He may or may not play tonight.
The Goalies are Smith and Reimer, and the Leafs are misisng Bozak (who cares?) and Gardiner (their best defenseman) so the game is definitely winnable, though it might be debatable as to whether a loss for either of these teams isn't actually a win.
Should be a good game tonight, either way. I am loving the Coyotes on the east-coast too, makes watching them so much easier.
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Video Review
By now you've seen the highlights from the Oilers game last night and know full well that they were robbed by a video review system that is little more than a joke.
Fundamentally, the whole thing is screwed up and I think it boils down to two main problems that could easily be fixed.
1. Coaches Challenges are stupid.
Does the game of hockey not have enough strategy? Of course it does, and there is absolutely no need to force a coach to choose between a timeout and a challenge - it's idiotic.
The reason it's so stupid is because the teams all have people watching the plays and will tell the coach whether or not to review a play. It's highly doubtful that a coach would challenge a call erroneously (assuming the NHL gets the call right, and at this point that is a big "if").
An obvious solution is to assign video refs to each game and have them call down to correct any call, at any time, that doesn't appear correct. There is no need at all for the NHL to ever blow any call, ever. From a high stick in the face that is missed to a potential off-side, if you're going to do video review, review everything. Ironically doing that would probably save time.
Its a solution so obvious that it's just insane that they went with the system they went with.
2. Allow logic to be a part of the process.
This is again, is just painfully obvious. There's been a bunch of times where logic dictates the puck had to go in the net, but because there isn't visual proof the correct call is not made.
By the logic the NHL employs on video reviews, electrons, protons, viruses, oxygen and love are all things that probably do not exists since they cannot be seen visually by the naked eye.
My question is this: If the NHL lets human referees make subjective calls 99% of the time, why do video reviews have to be objectively conclusive to overturn a bad call? The whole "you need irrefutable proof to overturn the on-ice call" is the equivalent of being dumb on purpose.
To solve this problem, when a call is "inconclusive," the video refs should say so and let the on-ice refs look at the play on a monitor and use whatever reasoning they want to to make the call, since that is what they do on EVERY OTHER PLAY.
In order to make last night's game fair, I think the Oilers and Kings should each get a point and play a shoot-out at the conclusion of the next game they against each other to decide last night's final point.
Anyways, it was a pleasure solving the NHL's second biggest problem (dangerous work environment is obviously the first) and I thank you for reading and wish you a wonderful day.