Lehtera and the off-side rule

[evil roy]

I know I’m late to the party on this one, but I got my tinfoil hat out of winter storage and thought I’d give it a try so bear with me on this. I have to admit, after looking at the replay and listening to the commentators' I was in agreement that (technically anyway) Lehtera was offside on the now infamous coach's challenge. However that was before I actually took a look at the NHL rulebook.

Code: Select all

Rule 83 – Off-side 
83.1  Off-side - Players of the attacking team must not precede the puck into the attacking zone. The position of the player’s skates and not that of his stick shall be the determining factor in all instances in deciding an off-side. A player is off-side when both skates are completely over the leading edge of the blue line involved in the play. 

A player is on-side when either of his skates are in contact with, or on his own side of the line, at the instant the puck completely crosses the leading edge of the blue line regardless of the position of his stick.  
However, a player actually controlling the puck who shall cross the 
line ahead of the puck shall not be considered “off-side,” provided he had possession and control of the puck prior to his skates crossing the blue line. 

Let’s break this down:

"A player is off-side when both skates are completely over the leading edge of the blue line involved in the play."

This is clearly not what is going on in Lehtera's case and NO ONE is saying that it is. Since the offside rule is binary (i.e. if one is NOT offside then one is--ipso facto--onside) this is the end of the discussion UNLESS some other part of the rule can be shown to contradict the above passage. And this is exactly what the “offsiders” are saying; "OK, so his back foot had not crossed the line, but as soon as he took that skate off the ice it was only the leading foot that mattered.” So let’s have a look-see:

"A player is on-side when either of his skates are in contact with, or
on his own side of the line, at the instant the puck completely crosses
the leading edge of the blue line regardless of the position of his stick."

I am completely baffled by how anyone (everyone) can take this section to mean that a player’s skate needs to be in contact with the ice to be onside--the rule explicitly says it needn't be! Again: "in contact with OR on his own side". AFAIK the only alternative to being "in contact" with something is NOT being in contact with something. What other possible meaning is there?

So the second part of the rule adds to but DOES NOT contradict the first part: It does not matter if the player's skate is in contact with the ice--as long as some portion of either of his skates is on his side of the line, the player is onside. There is no other honest interpretation.


The frightening takeaway from this is that there are only 2 possibilities:

1) the NHL does not understand the off-side rule that they themselves wrote

OR

2) they purposely made a call they knew to be wrong to benefit a big-market, Stanley Cup winning team.

I honestly don't know which one is worse.

[ComradeT]

From what I understood reading about this, the crux of the problem is not so much whether the skate was on the ice but what to do when the back skate is exactly over the blue line (i.e., it is not completely across it, so both skates are not yet in the offensive zone, but it's not on the other side of the line either). That is where the rule is ambiguous. Lehtera's skate is right over the 12-inch blue band. If you go by the definition of the off-side, he's on-side, but if you go by the definition of on-side, he's offside.

IMHO, the rule should ideally only specify off-side and everything else should be considered on.

[Kerfuffle]

2) they purposely made a call they knew to be wrong to benefit a big-market, Stanley Cup winning team.

You conspiracy guys drive me nuts. The fix is in!

[evil roy]

2) they purposely made a call they knew to be wrong to benefit a big-market, Stanley Cup winning team.

You conspiracy guys drive me nuts. The fix is in!

Hey now, I did make a tinfoil hat disclaimer at the start

[cardsfan04]

It's a poorly written rule in that it defines a situation as being both onside and offside. A friend of mine referees hockey in STL and I saw mention of this in an article as well. Apparently the way it is called is that if the skate is on the ice touching the blue line, he's ok. If it's in the air, he's not. I know that's not exactly how the rule reads, but apparently that's the accepted interpretation of the rule.

I don't know if the NHL rulebook has a section like this, but many rulebooks have an "accepted interpretation" section that defines some of those ambiguities of the rules.

[cprice12]

The confusing part about it is, you could argue that he wasn't offside or onside. Both skates were in the air and his leading skate had not touched down inside the zone when the puck crossed the line.
Yes, his back skate was off the ice, but his front skate hadn't touched down yet inside the zone. So how can he be offside if he hasn't technically entered the zone yet?
How do you call that one?
I'm thinking that you are onside until you establish yourself as being offside. And Lehtera did not establish himself inside the zone until his front skate touched down inside the offensive zone, which was after the puck had entered the zone, so he is onside...or at least it looked that way anyway. It's so friggin' hard to tell for sure when the puck crossed the line and when his front skate touched down.
Which, is a very valid argument to let the call on the ice stand.

[gaijin]

2) they purposely made a call they knew to be wrong to benefit a big-market, Stanley Cup winning team.

You conspiracy guys drive me nuts. The fix is in!

That's not exactly what he is saying. He's saying that logically, if you accept the major premise that the offsides rule is true as written, and the minor premise that at least one of Lehtera's skates were not across the leading edge of the blue line when the puck crossed, there are only two possibilities concerning this situation: 1) the refs don't know the rule, or 2) they deliberately disregarded the rule and judged the play offsides.

One of the two must be true.

[cardsfan04]

That's my complaint about it. It's so hard to tell exactly when he enters in relation to the puck. I've heard that the NHL has angles that we haven't seen. But, if that's the case, why on earth would they not release their angles? If they have something that's more definitive than what I've seen, I'd feel a lot better about it. I still think he was "probably" offside, but probably isn't supposed to be the burden for overturning a call.

[evil roy]

2) they purposely made a call they knew to be wrong to benefit a big-market, Stanley Cup winning team.

You conspiracy guys drive me nuts. The fix is in!

That's not exactly what he is saying. He's saying that logically, if you accept the major premise that the offsides rule is true as written, and the minor premise that at least one of Lehtera's skates were not across the leading edge of the blue line when the puck crossed, there are only two possibilities concerning this situation: 1) the refs don't know the rule, or 2) they deliberately disregarded the rule and judged the play offsides.

One of the two must be true.

Yes, it was supposed to me more of a syllogism than an accusation

[cprice12]

That's my complaint about it. It's so hard to tell exactly when he enters in relation to the puck. I've heard that the NHL has angles that we haven't seen. But, if that's the case, why on earth would they not release their angles? If they have something that's more definitive than what I've seen, I'd feel a lot better about it. I still think he was "probably" offside, but probably isn't supposed to be the burden for overturning a call.

The best "angle" was from the camera right on the blue line. They showed a still shot from this camera that apparently showed the puck not across the blue line when Lehtera's back skate was in the air. But the quality of that image was crappy and I couldn't tell where the puck was.
But that shouldn't matter. My main point is that his leading skate had not touched down inside the zone, so he can't be offsides until that happens. The still shot they showed as "proof" that he was offsides, still had his leading skate in the air, meaning he was not yet offsides at that point.
I honestly don't think the officials even took that into consideration, because if they had, then there is no way they could have conclusively said he was offside.

[ecbm]

Definitely seems like they're making it up as they go along. I've watched/played hockey for 30+ years and I never thought that whether or not a skate was on the ice mattered for offside. I had that rule explained to me literally countless times in my life and never, ever, ever have I heard it stipulated: oh, but if the trailing skate that would make him onside is not touching the ice then he's offside.

I don't think there's anything conspiracy-like here; offside is a difficult rule and this version of it is very poorly written. What bothers me is the general attitude of the officials: they seems to want to maximize their impact on the game, when the opposite is what they want. The the offside review should be done with a full-speed replay and if it's not apparent from that that an obviously blown call influenced the play, the call on the ice stands. As I read the other day: why can we only review offside like this? What about the high-stick or the hook in the buildup to the goal?

[evil roy]

The confusing part about it is, you could argue that he wasn't offside or onside. Both skates were in the air and his leading skate had not touched down inside the zone when the puck crossed the line.
Yes, his back skate was off the ice, but his front skate hadn't touched down yet inside the zone. So how can he be offside if he hasn't technically entered the zone yet?
How do you call that one?
I'm thinking that you are onside until you establish yourself as being offside. And Lehtera did not establish himself inside the zone until his front skate touched down inside the offensive zone, which was after the puck had entered the zone, so he is onside...or at least it looked that way anyway. It's so friggin' hard to tell for sure when the puck crossed the line and when his front skate touched down.
Which, is a very valid argument to let the call on the ice stand.

The first part of the rule really is indisputable. Why they went and muddied it up with the second part when they could have just said "In all other cases the player shall be deemed to be on-side" is beyond me, but even if we assume that the rule somehow either contradicts itself or leaves some Schrödingeresque neither-onside-nor-off quantum state (and I would argue that ASSUME is exactly what you would have to do) then there was still plenty of justification to let the on-ice ruling stand. Instead they ruled against the hometeam whose player had clearly not crossed the blueline disallowing a go-ahead goal in the waning minutes of the final period of a playoff game on national TV. You would think that under these circumstances they would have to have some compelling evidence and iron-clad wording to go against the original ruling wouldn't you? Yet neither was the case so again we come back to the choice: stupidity or corruption?

Even money IMO, though as my grandpappy always used to say, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

[cprice12]

Definitely seems like they're making it up as they go along. I've watched/played hockey for 30+ years and I never thought that whether or not a skate was on the ice mattered for offside. I had that rule explained to me literally countless times in my life and never, ever, ever have I heard it stipulated: oh, but if the trailing skate that would make him onside is not touching the ice then he's offside.

I don't think there's anything conspiracy-like here; offside is a difficult rule and this version of it is very poorly written. What bothers me is the general attitude of the officials: they seems to want to maximize their impact on the game, when the opposite is what they want. The the offside review should be done with a full-speed replay and if it's not apparent from that that an obviously blown call influenced the play, the call on the ice stands. As I read the other day: why can we only review offside like this? What about the high-stick or the hook in the buildup to the goal?

I've said that for an offside review you get 30 seconds. And if it's not conclusively obvious that the call was missed, then the call on the ice stands. I'd be happier if they did away with it entirely though.
Reviewing a play for 5 minutes and taking away goals because a player may have been an eyelash offside 20 seconds before the goal was scored, which has nothing to do with the actual goal being scored, is pretty stupid and is NOT in the spirit of the coaches being allowed to challenge offsides calls. Correct the obvious missed offside calls, but for those that are razor-thin close to where you can't tell right away, you let the call on the ice stand.
It's hard to argue the "get the call right" point of view, but offsides is missed a lot. It's a judgement call. It's like wanting to review balls and strikes in baseball but only at certain points of the game. (I hate video review in baseball as well)

[theohall]

Based on the way that rule is written, the league has been incorrectly enforcing the rule all season.

Many of the offsides calls which have resulted in over-turned goals were of the "back skate off the ice" variety - even if the back skate was outside of the zone/hovering over the blueline.

So, no conspiracy just repeatedly ruled wrong based on the way that rule reads.

[Portland Blues]

In a perfect world I'd like to see the rule enforced in the same way as a photo finish in track or even horse racing. Not a matter of whether the skate is touching the ice but rather has the skate completely cleared the line.

[Misc. Blues]

It doesn't matter we lost the game regardless. It's not like any refs are fined for bad/missed calls.

When have the refs known the interpretation of the rules?

[Robb_K]

In a perfect world I'd like to see the rule enforced in the same way as a photo finish in track or even horse racing. Not a matter of whether the skate is touching the ice but rather has the skate completely cleared the line.

This is it. I played for 35 years (1951-85). It was always as follows as far as I knew: if both of the offensive player's skates were completely inside the offensive zone (e.g. both skates entirely beyond the front edge of the blueline). the skater was offside. If NOT, the play is NOT offside.

The ridiculous wording of The NHL's rule should be changed. It violates the spirit of the rule. Being off the ice should not be a factor. If BOTH feet of the skater are off the ice, but are completely in front of the blueline, the play should be offside. If both are off the ice, but NOT completely across the line when the puck is completely across, the play should NOT be ruled offside. To overturn a goal ruled on the ice, the burden should be on the officials to have CONCLUSIVE PROOF. If NOT, the on-ice ruling should stand.

Lehterä's entry into the O-zone on Tarasenko's goal should NOT have been found to be offside. There was no CONCLUSIVE PROOF. We need a simpler, hard and fast wording, so there is no ambiguity.