Shockingly, Men Viewing Video On Tablet Not All That Entertaining
Oh no. It's happened AGAIN.
A dramatic, last-minute, game-tying home team goal Saturday sent fans into spasms of delirium - only for the score to be disallowed by the scourge known as video review for offside.
ESPN quoted a club executive perfectly describing the absurdity:
"When a goal is scored and not one person inside the stadium questions the validity of that goal, including both sets of players, coaches, fans and even the officials themselves, it's time to question whether someone remote disallowing that goal is really what football wants or needs."
Eh, what? "Football?"
Sadly, the plague which has infected North American hockey has also contaminated European soccer. The quote above comes from West Ham chairman Jeff Shi.
Closer to home, the coach's challenge for offside has bedeviled the Seattle Kraken all season. It's especially painful when it penalizes the goal-deprived Kraken, 29th in NHL scoring this season.
Most recently, Tye Kartye had a goal waved off April 2 in San Jose, when a review confirmed Brandon Tanev had entered the zone early.
March 24 against Montreal, my game story included this: "Matty Beniers has an apparent second Seattle goal wiped off the board for the most absurd of reasons - Beniers put HIMSELF offside.
"Subsequently, Beniers beautifully tips in an Oliver Bjorkstrand shot on the power play, briefly allowing the fandom to dream of a miracle comeback. A successful coach's challenge renders the celebration moot."
In trying to justify this assault on the sanity of hockey fans everywhere, Arizona Coyotes GM Bill Armstrong unwittingly echoed the points made by the soccer executive.
“When something will happen on the ice, and all the fans can see it was wrong," Armstrong said to NHL.com, "try to get it right so it’s not only fair for the players on the ice, but fairness for both teams and officiating.”
The key part of Armstrong's statement, made at last month's NHL general manager meetings: "When all the fans can see it was wrong." Offside reviews were never meant to overturn calls needing electron microscopes - or at least they shouldn't be.
The issue came up because the general managers have inexplicably recommended to the NHL Board of Governors that use of replay be expanded. Expanded! We've previously outlined the laundry list of reasons this is a horrible, no-good, very bad, have-you-lost-your-minds idea.
To wit:
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Dear Board of Governors: expand the playoffs to all 32 teams if you want. Grant an expansion team to Ecuador if you want. Start games with shootouts if you want. But please, for the love of shinny, contract, do not expand, video reviews.