THE NEW NHL RULE WHICH MIGHT GET FIXED

You've certainly heard the saying, "be careful about what you wish for". In 2015 the NHL rolled out a rule which everyone thought was going to be great. Once implemented, fans quickly realized how bad the change was. Now, two seasons later the NHL managers have proposed a fix to the rule.

RULE 78.7a- Introduced in 2015 so egregious offsides goals could be reviewed and overturned. It quickly turned into coaches reviewing game changing goals hoping that someone was offsides.

In order to review a goal, a coach just needed to have a timeout in hand. Challenge the goal and and be wrong, say goodbye to your timeout. That was it. If the proposed tweak to rule passes this offseason, being wrong will cost more than a timeout.

Offsides Reviews 2016-2017- Curious to see just how many offsides reviews there has been, I ran across the following data which was shared on Reddit this spring:

So, just looking at this season's regular season data we can see that 116 goals were challenged for a player being offsides. Of that, 39 resulted in a point coming off the scoreboard. Not having seen all of those challenges, I'd guess that maybe a handful of them were legit calls in the spirit of the rule while the rest were ticky-tack B.S.

Proposal-In order to stop coaches from using this challenge with reckless abandonment, the managers have proposed a change to what happens if the goal is in fact onsides. Instead of just losing a timeout, a coach will now lose a player for two minutes. You got it, a 2-minute minor for delay of game is now being proposed.

Now, don't get too excited. This still needs to be approved by the NHL Competition Committee and the Board of Governors. As a fan, I hope this passes and is in effect for next season.