Since 2015, the coach's challenge has become an integral part of the game. However, through all the iterations and rule changes, some teams and coaches have seen more challenge success than others.
At the beginning of last season, there were some whispers that the NHL's braintrust had quietly suggested that teams be a little less aggressive when pursuing coach's challenges.
Goalie interference rulings seem particularly difficult to predict whether you're watching from the bench, the press box, the broadcast booth or your couch at home.
The suggestion was that coaches were being encouraged not to challenge unless they thought the odds were quite strongly in their favor. Don't look for a millimeter of shade on an offside ruling, and don't issue a call for goalie interference if somebody breathes on your stopper a little too heavily.
The intent, presumably, was twofold: to do away with as many long stoppages as possible and to cut down on the arguments and criticisms that ignite with nearly every challenge.
Did it help? Not really.
The number of challenges remained more consistent than any other year-to-year comparison since the coach's challenge was first introduced in the fall of 2015. But teams are getting better at finding the right moments to request their reviews, and success rates for challenges initiated by coaches are now at their highest rate of all time.
The 2021-22 season saw 222 challenges through the regular-season and the playoffs, initiated by both coaches and the NHL's hockey operations department.
That number rose slightly, to 225, in 2022-23.
There were moments, especially in the playoffs, when it seemed like coaches were pulling their punches and declining to ask for reviews. But we saw 17 challenges in each of the last two seasons, with three initiated by hockey operations in this year's playoffs, and two in 2021-22.
All told, there was a coach's challenge just less than once every six games, all the way through the year.
That's a big shift from the early days when coaches only lost a timeout if they were wrong — but weren't allowed to ask for more than one review per game. Challenges peaked at 337 in the 2016-17 season, with 82 fewer total games played in that pre-expansion era. That was a little more than one challenge every four games.
Looking for a course correction, the league introduced minor penalties for incorrect offside challenges ahead of the 2017-18 season. Reviews dropped by nearly 15 percent, to 291, then rebounded slightly to 298 in 2018-19.
That summer, the league added the opportunity to challenge for missed stoppages in play such as hand passes or pucks leaving the playing surface, but also applied the minor penalty to all challenge types.
Once the consequences for incorrect goaltender interference calls became more serious, the number of challenges dropped significantly. In the two pandemic-impacted seasons, there was only one challenge about every eight games.
Then, as hockey got back to normal, the review requests started to tick back up, although not anywhere near the early levels.
Now more than ever, one type of challenge has proven to be most beneficial.
Here's how the 192 regular-season challenges from coaches broke down in the 2022-23 season:
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
One year earlier, coaches initiated 184 regular-season challenges. Here's how those broke down:
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
In 2022, Shayna Goldman of The Athletic graphed coaches' historic rate of success on challenges during the regular season. The overall trend through the years is definitely positive, and the threat of a minor penalty has impacted coaches' willingness to gamble.
Despite the attempt to move away from borderline or uncertain calls, goalie interference challenges actually rose a bit last season. But the coaches were right more often than ever before, cracking the 50 percent threshold. But, it's still more or less a coin flip.
Some coaches are more likely than others to initiate challenges. With goalie interference especially, they have wildly varying degrees of success.
Paul Maurice had six regular-season goaltender-interference challenges with Florida last year but only won two of them, while Jared Bednar went three-for-five with Colorado. Times were tough in Montreal for Martin St. Louis, who failed on all four of his goaltender interference challenges, while Ottawa's D.J. Smith and New Jersey's Lindy Ruff were both zero-for-three.
Only one coach had a perfect record while challenging three times or more. In San Jose, David Quinn went three-for-three.
Meanwhile, offside challenges are now almost a slam dunk league-wide and approaching 90 percent accuracy. It has become a science for many teams' 'eye in the sky' crews, with 19 of 32 being perfect on their offside challenges in 2022-23.
Some of those coaches weren't shy either. Don Granato went five-for-five on offside calls in Buffalo, as did Smith in Ottawa. Jay Woodcroft was six-for-six in Edmonton and so was Sheldon Keefe in Toronto, while Maurice led them all with a seven-for-seven record in Florida.
Two teams accounted for 40 percent of last season's failed offside challenges. Both the Dallas Stars and Vancouver Canucks went zero-for-two.
These days, the truly muddy water surrounds the challenges for missed play stoppages. Only introduced in 2019, it's a little bit amazing that coaches even keep trying. They collectively went zero-for-seven in the first year in 2019-20, then two-for-five in the 56-game follow-up campaign.
Maurice was the first coach ever to get a missed stoppage overturned on March 13, 2021. He was still with Winnipeg and correctly called out a hand pass from Travis Dermott to Alexander Kerfoot that set up a goal that gave the Toronto Maple Leafs a 1-0 lead just 1:25 into the first period at Scotiabank Arena.
The play is a great example of how a successful challenge can change a game's momentum. Mason Appleton came back to open the scoring for Winnipeg just 16 seconds after that goal was taken off the board, and the Jets skated to a 5-2 victory.
Over the last couple of years, coaches have gotten a little braver. They made 14 play-stopped review requests in 2021-22 and 13 last season, but are still getting less than half their challenges right.
If the same pattern holds as with offside and goalie interference, more practice should help nudge them a little closer to perfect — quite possibly with Maurice continuing to lead the way.