The NHL wants us to stop complaining

This past Saturday in between periods of the Oilers game, the boys on the Hockey Night in Canada panel had an interesting discussion as the annual GM meetings approach next week. 

Long story short? They’re not happy with the complaining they’re receiving from the players and coaches about their awful review policy. You can watch the clip that was aired on Sportsnet below:

As Mike Johnston stated, the GM Meeting will take place in Florida on March 19-21. There, the NHL is expected to request to all teams that neither players or coaches are allowed to voice their opinions about the NHL rules to any type of media. And by NHL rules, I’m talking about the recent goalie interference and offside video review challenges we’ve been having oh so many problems with since it began.

As seen in the video, there has been an increasing amount of coaches and players speaking out about it. This has been a long time coming and it’s awesome to see people besides media and fans speak their mind. Never forget about the day Cam Talbot spoke out about the issue and blew all of us away because of it. Seriously, I’ve never been closer to buying a Talbot jersey than I was that night.

Also never forget that time Milan Lucic complained about goalie interference after “the goal” from last years playoffs. I get fired up just thinking about “the goal” and want to scream into a pillow whenever I see this video of fired up Looch.

This request from the league is hilarious on so many levels. You can’t just provide consumers with a crappy product and then demand that they not complain about it? We have obviously encountered numerous flaws with the system and if nothing changes this summer then the athletes who are directly affected by the awful rules should have every right to speak the truth about it.

At the end of January during the All-Star weekend, Gary Bettman commented on the current state of reviews. He didn’t seem too impressed with how things are going, so my hope is that he has a plan in place to correct it this summer. I can understand how he doesn’t want any more complaining about it if there IS a plan in place to fix this mess.

Thankfully they are only asking players and coaches to lay off the harassment of the NHL for their review process and said nothing about the fans. So in the meantime, BAN THE REVIEWS I SAY YOU GUYS SUCK!

The Pittsburgh Penguins are the latest team in the NHL to get fleeced by the review process. Here we have Evgeni Malkin straddling the blueline while his team carries the puck over the blue line BUT WAIT! Video review showed that in the process of Malkin refusing to go offside he did, in fact, have a skate blade over the line by 3/4 of an inch. Hit the showers, Pens! This is a tough one to watch but at the same time, it makes me a little happy inside to see other teams get affected by such ruling.

I understand that an offside is technically an objective call, but maybe we can do something that doesn’t involve the video replay to catch something a natural eye from the linesmen can’t? Just my two cents.