Montreal Canadiens: Make adjustments to the offside rule

The Montreal Canadiens lost another hard fought game at the hands of the New York Islanders, and unfortunately, an offside challenge made it more difficult.

Fair warning, this may be a little more rant-like than I’d want. The Montreal Canadiens lost their last game at home before heading out on the road. It was a slow and sloppy start as Anthony Beauvillier scored to make it 1-0 1:24 into the game. Coincidently, it was Paul Byron‘s first shift at center which Habs fans weren’t happy with anyway.

However, the rest of the first period started going Montreal’s way after Matthew Barzal put the Islanders up by two. At the end of the first 20 minutes, the game was tied thanks to Nicolas Deslauriers and Byron (redemption).

The Habs fell into their own way in the first half of the second period with more defensive blips and unawareness allowing the Islanders to score another two. Then something changed, and Montreal started to take the game over. They had chance after chance, but Thomas Greiss stopped them.

And then we get to the heart of this post, David Schlemko‘s almost goal.

Change It

The Habs got a power play opportunity halfway through the second. The team broke into the zone and got a lot of traffic around Greiss.

Schlemko had the initial shot that went behind the net, and Daniel Carr picked it up and tried to jam it in. Artturi Lehkonen was there as well as the two were desperately trying to get the puck past Greiss. Fortunately, the rebound trickled out to Schlemko who found the back of the net bringing the Habs within one.

Great! Awesome! No… It’s getting to the point where fans can’t celebrate goals in these areas anymore because there’s a chance they’re going to be called back with a coach’s challenge.

What as the culprit this time? An offside. When was the offside? 53 seconds before the goal. Carr had his skate off the ice when receiving the puck on the blueline to enter the zone and that was the end of that.