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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.
"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.