The Coach's Challenge needs to go the way of the Two-Line Pass

By Marc Deschamps

In the Buffalo Sabres home opener, fans got a rude awakening when the NHL's latest rule change resulted in a wiped out goal. On Tuesday night, it happened again, in a 3-1 loss against the Dallas Stars. In both circumstances, the Sabres were down by one, and those disallowed goals could have been a difference maker. The new rule isn't just frustrating Sabres fans. The Coach's Challenge, added by the NHL this past offseason, seems to have drawn the ire of fans and players throughout the league. 

For the uninitiated, the Coach's Challenge essentially works like it does in football, allowing a coach to challenge the original call by the official. If the challenge is unsuccessful, the team that initiated the challenge loses a time-out. The Coach's Challenge works well in football because each down tends to be fairly short. A successful Coach's Challenge in football might wipe out a few seconds of play at most and, theoretically, it also helps to make sure the right call is made. In hockey, however, stoppages are far less frequent. If a coach wants to challenge an off-sides, it might be a minute or two before the challenge can be registered. For example, if Evander Kane is off-sides in the Senators' zone and two minutes of play elapse between his initial entry and Jack Eichel scoring a goal, the goal and everything that occurred between is wiped out by a successful challenge.

This raises some questions, though. If Buffalo scores on a delayed penalty, but the goal is wiped out by a Coach's Challenge that establishes that the Buffalo player was off-sides before the penalty, does Ottawa still serve that penalty? Since the clock returns to the point when the off-sides call should have been made, it would stand to reason that the Sabres would lose out on a goal and a power play at the same time in this particular circumstance.

The biggest problem with the Coach's Challenge, however, is that it penalizes a team for the mistakes of the officials. No one disputes that the referees and linesmen have a difficult task, but if the call was screwed up by the officials, why should the offending team by penalized? It's one thing to disallow a goal because of goaltender interference (which the Coach's Challenge can be used for) or because the puck was hit out of the air by a high stick, but wiping out multiple minutes of play and a goal because the officials failed to make the right call is detrimental to the game of hockey. Considering that the league is consistently trying to increase the speed of the game, not to mention the number of goals scored, it's a major step in the wrong direction. 

At this point, the Coach's Challenge rule seems fated to share the same fate as the Two-Line Pass rule. That particular rule, which the league did away with in 2005, lasted far longer than it should have. The Two-Line Pass rule prevented players from passing the puck across two lines of play. As a result, it was much more difficult for players to get breakaway opportunities, slowing down the game. As the NHL started moving towards their goal of faster, higher-scoring games, the rule was, rightfully, dumped. 

While certainly well-intentioned, the Coach's Challenge rule has proven to be an unwelcome addition to the game of hockey. It slows the flow of play, it takes away a team's momentum and it hurts the overall viewing experience. This addition to the game will only continue to frustrate players and fans alike as time goes on.

The 2015-16 NHL season is only a month in and it already seems clear that the rule either needs to be appended or abolished altogether, just as the Two-Line Pass rule once was. One can only hope that, unlike that particular rule, it won’t take over 60 years for it to be overturned.