Apr 16, 2016
Thumbs to video review and Bruins keeping Julien
TSN's Dave Hodge gives a thumbs down to video review taking the game out of the hands of the officials and thumbs up to the Bruins' decision to retain head coach Claude Julien.
By Dave Hodge
It didn’t take long. The result of a a Stanley Cup playoff game has been affected, if not determined, by a coach’s challenge. Officially, the St. Louis Blues have no argument. Video evidence showed that the rush preceding Vladimir Tarasenko’s apparent tie-breaking goal was a tiny bit of an inch offside. Those who subscribe to the theory that anything and everything it takes to get crucial calls right will join the Chicago Blackhawks in supporting the innovation as it played out last night. Thus, the NHL has returned to the farcical days of the 1990s when video review would wipe out goals if the tip of an attacking player’s skate blade was touching the goal crease. Ironically, failure to review such an infraction by Brett Hull allowed the Ken Hitchcock-coached Dallas Stars to win the Stanley Cup in 1999.
Perhaps that had something to do with Hitchcock’s acceptance of what happened to his Blues last night. He refused to complain. He won’t mind if the rest of us do.
The idea of a coach’s challenge is to make sure a game is not decided by a referee’s obvious error. If a second look cannot detect such a mistake in a reasonably short length of time, everything that transpired on the ice should stand. Let there be common sense; lots of little things are missed.
Last night’s controversial offside in St. Louis could not possibly have been detected confidently by a linesman, especially as he is reluctant to stop play when he knows he has video backup if it turns out he was wrong to let play continue.
The machines are in place to help the humans, not to wrest control of the game from them. We all know what offside looks like. Goalie interference, too. You should be able to see it when it occurs. But, okay, not always. You should be able to see it quickly when it is presented in video form. The game can’t become an episode of CSI. It is just plain silly.
“Thumbs down” to the NHL for being so wrong at trying to be so right.
“Thumbs up” to Claude Julien and the Boston Bruins for deciding they are each other’s best fit.
Surely there were attractive opportunities for both if one or the other chose to part and look elsewhere, but that happens too often in the NHL.
The Bruins could have pinned their failure to make the playoffs on their coach and no one would have been surprised. They agreed with many outside observers that Julien did not fail management or the players as much as they might have let him down. The Bruins knew full well that Julien would be an NHL coach somewhere else (Ottawa?) almost immediately if they let him go. They are wise to keep him and fix the things that need fixing. Among them is finding a replacement for Loui Eriksson if he can’t be re-signed.
As for Julien’s desire to stay in Boston, he expressed it with conviction and gave the Bruins the best reason of all to keep him, if they needed one from him.
Julien believes his time in Boston has made him a better coach, and that’s just one of the factors that convince him he’s in the right place.
He’s one of three head coaches who have won the Stanley Cup with their current teams. It doesn’t mean he’ll never leave Boston any more than it suggests Joel Quenneville (Chicago) and Darryl Sutter (Los Angeles) aren’t going to move again. It simply means that he and the others belong where they are right now.