Great job AJ as always. Thank you very much for the effort that you put in to these podcasts. I was not able to watch the game but was closely moniitoring Twiitter. Really a frustrating night. Message to the Predators, remember the saying “what goes around, comes around”, that will come to bite you, big time…

The comments AJ makes about the offside reviews in this game (not effecting the play & needing to measure with a micrometer) apply to almost every NHL review I’ve seen. I think these comments are effective arguments for eliminating the coach’s offside challenge. I think the original reason the NHL enacted this review was that they felt it was one rule that could be objectively determined with a camera. These reviews show that linesmen are not grossly missing these calls and play is not really being effected by marginal violations. Normally an 8:00 game would be over(in regulation) by 10:40. But this game ended at 11:00 mainly because every time the Avs scored there was a review so I am not really wanting to see an increase in reviewable calls. If offside reviews were eliminated I might favor replacing them with coaches challenging a blatently incorrect major call as we saw with Cole in Canada last week.

Yep.

Great job, AJ, especially for 3:00 AM. Very balanced discussion of the officiating issues. Yes, the AVs played intermittently crappy despite them but it may have been enough to keep a developing team from getting the confidence needed to win plus the score effects are real. This extra, almost sacrosanct, level of scrutiny given to one narrow aspect of the game defies explanation. It’s nonsensical.

The Avs are hitting the same sort of lull they hit around the time of the Swedish trip last year and it’s a similar sort of weird schedule except I think last year was 5 days off then 2 games and then another 5 days off. Hopefully playing regularly will prove beneficial. I like that Bednar wants to reward the best players but I also believe these nearly constantly changing lines and pairs are screwing with team cohesion on the ice.