WWYDW: Offer Sheets

Free agency is looming, which means teams are gearing up to sign the best players of this year’s unrestricted free agent class to deals that are likely to cost them significant money and term.

There’s an additional wrinkle to free agency this year, however. A lot of cap-strapped teams this year will be looking to sign big-name restricted free agents like Mitch Marner and Kyle Connor. This leaves those teams wide open to be targeted by General Managers willing to pay the necessary compensation to sign those players to offer sheets.

The Canucks currently have all the picks required to sign any player they so choose to an offer sheet, but the compensation is steep for any player commanding over $4.227438 in salary.

Last week I asked: Should the NHL keep the offside review or get rid of it? 

You used to not be able to pass over two lines. The NHL was wise to get rid of that rule. Hell, you used to not be able to pass forward. What a dreadful idea.

Just get rid of offsides entirely. If teams want to play high-risk, cherry-picking hockey, let them. It’s stupid that the league keeps calling these goals back because one guy had his toe ahead of the puck while entering the offensive zone.

The NHL should be trying to reduce stoppages in play, increase offense, and improve flow. Get rid of offsides. They serve no purpose except to slow the game down and discourage risk-taking.

I don’t know. There are still enough situations where a defensive team that’s tired did end up clearing the zone and deserves that whistle, but the refs miss it and it ends up a goal after said defensive team is warn out. I like the review for that. You can argue that if the off side comes way before the goal then it’s “against the spirit of the rule” but that ignores the fatigue factor of the defensive players.

To me this is just another example of there being no perfect solution. You can’t have gray areas either and let the refs make “judgement calls”. It needs to be black and white in this case. I say leave it in. Better to take away a goal you didn’t deserve, even if it is sometimes a “technicality”, than give a goal that wasn’t deserved.

If they wanted to experiment with no off-sides at all, I’d be interested to see the results.

Let referees make the call. Video review is ruining sports by delaying games and robbing fans of great plays. Review goals if you must. But everything else should fall into the realm of acceptable human error, which is what sports is all about. While I know it is “life or death” for many fans, it’s a freaking game! A missed call is no more problematic than a bad bounce off a stanchion that leads to a goal.

The outrage created by perceived unfairness is part of fandom. As Canucks fans, we all know it and relish it. Let’s accept it and embrace the human frailty that is the essence of sport.

What they really need is a quicker decision, like an off-ice but in-house arbitrator working within a time frame of 60 – 90 seconds, rather than a `war room` committee debating the issue. How long is a commercial time-out; 90 seconds and no complaints?

I think I know the answer but I’d like to be sure. Give me some time to look over a few examples from these playoffs in my monitor and I’ll get back to you.