Sometime in the early to mid 1980s the National Basketball Association (NBA) stopped enforcing the strict definition of travelling and started letting players get away with more than 2 steps after dribbling. Highlight-reel dunks and drives to the basket ensued, and fans loved it. Purists might have decried it, but who cares? The league was more popular than ever and started its rapid rise in worldwide popularity that now sees it as the #2 global sport after the beautiful game, football.
I'm carrying on a little about this because I want to draw a parallel. I think that in the new new National Hockey League (NHL) a specific edict has been written to officials to stop calling offsides if players are close to onside. As part of the new drive to increase scoring, offsides has become a judgement call.
I have no proof for this theory apart from having watched a few dozen games and noticed the same phenomena in all of them: close plays at the blue line are going uncalled. Offsides calls that would have been made prior to the lockout are left uncalled. I don't even have a specific incident to point to that illustrates my theory on uncalled offsides. It just looks to me that the offsides that are close, that used to be called, are no longer called.
I have also played hockey since I was 5 years old and noticed that offsides is so ingrained in my psyche that I can almost feel when a play if offside, both watching and playing. Just like I can feel when a pending shot feels like a goal. I'm not unusual in this - watch other keen fans or the officials next time a game is on and you're in a group and you'll see people anticipating the play. An organic sensation arrives, an established patterns that's different in some way and you know something is going to happen.
So keen hockey fans, let me know if you notice offsides not being called.
Posted by James Sherrett at November 29, 2005 05:57 PMI never played hockey growing up (unless street hockey counts), so I don't have that intuitive sense about these things, but I have noticed a difference.
Before the lockout, I was getting fairly good at calling offsides and was quite proud of it. Now though... hell, I might as well just flip a coin. That's not to say that the calls the officials are making are random, it's just that I haven't learned where the grey areas are.
Posted by: Jason Landry at November 30, 2005 09:22 AM