There's Plenty Of Ways To Look At The Blackhawks/Blues Ending, And None Of Them Are Good For Hockey4/16/2016 First of all, the right call was made. Upon further review (choked back vomit just typing that), Jori Lehtera was offsides. Credit to Coach Quenneville and his staff for being the only people to either realize that, or for being desperate enough to question it. I mocked the blue line cameras when they were originally installed because I didn't think botched offsides calls were having that much of an impact on the outcome of games. Considering the officials needed what felt like 20 minutes to deliberate over something they had a bird's eye view of, it's clear I was wrong. Referees simply can't be trusted to do anything quickly, never mind make the correct call in real time. That being said, if the result of making sure the correct call was made is going to be puncturing a hole in the building and draining every ounce of energy out a postseason environment then I would rather just see a couple of goals resulting from offside plays. Especially when the play in question was as close to inconclusive as it was last night. There wasn't one unbiased hockey fan that had a problem with Tarasenko's second goal of the game until it was slowed down and looked at from 35 different angles. There were plenty of unbiased hockey fans that had a problem with sitting there - dick in hand - as they waited an eternity to continue watching a tightly contested playoff game. I am not even a Blues fan and the down time prior to disallowing that goal took the wind out of my sails. I can't imagine what it must have been like for the players who surely thought they had taken a late lead against one of their rivals. Of course they are professionals that are supposed to be able to overcome shitty circumstances, but there's not a person in the world that thought the Blues were winning that game after the officials incompetence gave the Blackhawks an unofficial intermission. If the entire thought process behind more cameras was to make sure the right team won then it's undoubtedly been an abject failure, because that delay played a part - albeit a small one - in costing the Blues the game. As if the time taken to review a goal scored on an offsides play while using a camera put in place for the sole purpose of looking at offsides plays wasn't mind boggling enough, the NHL had plenty more ineptitude in store for us. Nothing highlights the problem with instant replay like being able to immediately appeal the result of instant replay. Have I not been playing attention closely enough? Have coach's been using their challenges following reviews all season? So essentially the NHL thought the best way to get rid of uncertainty was to potentially put two different groups of authority in the position to directly contradict each other? The executives in Toronto that have more big screen HD televisions at their disposal than a Vegas sportsbook and are privy to camera angles that would traumatize you if they were used in a porno. Yet they are only entrusted with judging whether the puck crossed the line, and a referee squinting at an iPad while surrounded by thousands upon thousands of screaming fans is supposed to accurately judge the amount of allowable contact between a player and a goaltender? Now, it didn't matter last night since the goal they spent a half hour reviewing wasn't even remotely in need of review. Still, the fact that that process takes long enough to bore the average fan to tears isn't even the biggest problem I see with it, and having play halted for a momentum killing amount of time is a HUGE problem.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
January 2020
|