The whole possession by touch is not consistently called that’s the issue. I’ve seen a number of times when an offensive player backs into the zone with the puck and it is deemed onside because they have possession. But if you look really closely the puck may not be actually on their stick the moment their skates cross the blue line.
This is the core of the problem with offside review.
The rules of hockey are written under the assumption that the officials are human beings and not in a position to judge the location of the puck down to the millimeter, skate contact with the paint, whether the puck is actually touching stick tape versus being a millimeter away, etc.
Therefore, rules like offside have always been enforced within a reasonable, non-game-changing degree of error. It’s an assumption that takes place in every single game of hockey played worldwide at all times. Refs do the best they can to get things objectively accurate, but the more important thing is that their calls are
close enough that the margin doesn’t matter.
A handful of times a year we get something really egregious like the Duchene call, where an official just blows it entirely. Rarely does it impact the outcome of a game, but when it does, the ripple effect ends with that
one game.
Now the NHL has managed to create this system where every little inconsistency, even though inherent in the sport, becomes a glaring problem. The decision to challenge a call becomes game-altering. And more often than we could ever have anticipated, the NHL somehow gets the calls wrong
even with the benefit of video replay. This is a dynamic that impacts
many games, far beyond the scale of the problem it was supposed to solve.
We’re all just sitting here waiting for the Brett Hull moment when the league finally admits this was all a mistake. They truly are not willing to arrive at a common sense conclusion except by the hardest way possible.
