The National Hockey League's new coach's challenge system was doomed to fail before the first game of the 2015-16 regular season. It was never thought all the way through and the unintended consequences are already taking hold.
It is tough to choose where to start with where and how the NHL has gone wrong both with this system and with its "Situation Room" reviews in Toronto. Let's begin with the basics and start with the fact that there will always be some differences in decision making with all of the various officials that referee and line the game. You can't sanitize the game of all humanity and inevitable human mistakes by a replay.
An examination of the system, as there have been 358 games played to date, must now be implemented. It is never too late or too early to make a change. A debriefing and an analysis after a sample period is a good business practice. One quarter of the season gone is a good sample period, in my opinion.
1. Flawed design: It makes no sense to have only goaltender interference and offside plays subject to review. Instead of copying the NFL by making a gambled timeout the basis for a challenge, the NHL should instead adopt the NFL policy of making all scoring plays subject to review.
In actual practice in the NFL, the policy does not mean that referees are required to review each and every scoring play. Rather, it simply widened the practice all in place for the final two minutes of the second and fourth quarters.
This is how it should work: The on-ice officials and the review staff in Toronto -- I will discuss staffing later -- should be the ones to trigger the review. The NHL directive that the sole purpose of a goal review is to come to the correct call, regardless of the initial call on the ice is good in its intent but faulty in how it is set up and executed.
Secondly, hockey timeouts are not the same as football timeouts. For one thing, there's only one timeout in hockey. For another, the reason for their use can differ.
It was a flat-out bad idea from the start to force NHL coaches to save a timeout to gamble on a challenge. Anyone this side of Stevie Wonder could have seen that it was guaranteed to have negative and unintended outcomes.
There were bound to be situations where a legitimately needed timeout was not used because it was being saved just in case a challenge was needed later in the game. If the timeout WAS used for in-game purposes then even legitimate grounds for a goal challenge for goaltender interference or an offside instantly became irrelevant because the challenge was no longer available. That is silly.
On the flip side, there was bound to be abuse of the system with coaches knowing their challenge would be overturned and essentially turning it into an extended timeout to try to stall the other team's momentum and/or rest top players for longer than the typical 30-second timeout.
All along, if there was going to be a coach's challenge, the logical mechanism screamed for simply using the same system as challenging the curve and/or width stick. If the challenge is unsuccessful, the team gets a delay-of-game bench minor. That's a much better deterrent to frivolous challenges than charging a timeout where the coach gets rewarded with a longer delay than a standard timeout.
2. Flawed technology: It is ridiculous that, in a multi-billion dollar sports league in which goal/no goal rulings are the single most important calls made during the game, the on-ice officials are required to use devices that are inadequate for the needed purpose.
Seriously, what's the deal with the mini-tablets the on-ice officials are required to use? Besides the fact that they look like something my kids would use to play games or watch movies during a long car trip, they are insufficient for the needed job.
The 10-inch screen tablets are a joke. The views are insufficient because 1) the images are too small and not as precisely high-definition as they need to be for its intended purpose, and 2) when viewed on the small tablets, the frame-by-frame views are not as precise to the needed fractions of a second that can be all the difference in determining whether to overturn an offside call or judging goaltender interference.
The proper technology IS available for hockey video reviews; it's just not used in the NHL. For example, in a League I administrate there are 24-inch, ultra-high definition monitors in use that only cost about $150 at Best Buy or similar retailers. Combine improved on-ice views with the technology in Toronto and there is maximum chance of arriving at the correct goal / no goal ruling.
3. Staffing: Time to beat this drum again, especially because there's already noise about taking the coach's challenge out of the hands of on-ice referees and vesting the power solely in the Situation Room in Toronto, which has its own spotty track record.
Plain and simple, within NHL Hockey Operations, emphasis on credentials, specifically an officiating background would help in solving problems as Officials have more of a trained eye to see what the average pedestrian or fan will miss.
* How many of the replay officials in Toronto -- not one of whom has ever refereed or worked the lines professionally -- have ever taken the Rule Book test required of on-ice officials? How many could pass it?
* What are the criteria for being selected to judge calls made by on-ice referees? What training is involved? Having played the game even in the NHL is not sufficient experience to be making rules decisions.
We need to get people with actual professional officiating experience involved in the video review process. I would prefer if it incorporated currently active officials rotated through Situation Room duty-- because they are still out there in the trenches -- but I'd settle for a retired official or two.
4. Flawed Rule Book: I'll beat this drum again, too. The NHL Rule Book is a poorly written, convoluted, sometimes self-contradictory and counter-intuitive document. It needs to be thoroughly reviewed, streamlined and re-written. This is especially true about the goaltender interference rules that are at the root of endless controversies. There is so much case-by-case subjectivity, with insufficient instruction from the Rule Book -- sometimes, the intent and the letter of the law are diametrically opposite, in fact -- that no replay system in the world can mask how poorly the NHL Rule Book is written. Many times, memos that are issued are never incorporated into the Rule Book itself.
Furthermore, a comprehensive list should be incorporated in the Rule Book that specifically details what plays should and should not be reviewed. The use of video can then be prudently utilized and understood by all who are affected.
5. Flawed coaching: Let's get more calls right in the first place. Collectively, the hockey world needs to do a better job of coaching our officials to be in the proper position, to skate where they need to skate to see what they need to see, use some hockey sense and stop over-officiating (or under-officiating, because "we'll just fix it in replay) our sport.
The motto of the league's Officiating Department should be now and always....."GET IT RIGHT." Understanding the rules and the proper implementation of the tools at hand will only help the game that we all love and live by.
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Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born citizen to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the first American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games.
The longtime referee heads Officiating by Stewart, a consulting, training and evaluation service for officials. Stewart also maintains a busy schedule as a public speaker, fund raiser and master-of-ceremonies for a host of private, corporate and public events. As a non-hockey venture, he is the owner of Lest We Forget.