Sunday Overreactions: Should the NHL re-examine offside review?

Has there been a wilder sequence of playoff hockey than what we saw in overtime of Game 2 between the Ottawa Senators and Carolina Hurricanes?

The Canes thought they had the game won when Mark Jankowski scored on a delayed penalty, but it was taken off the board after a review determined the play was offside. The drama didn’t end there, though. That aforementioned delayed penalty actually turned out to be a penalty shot. Jordan Martinook then got his shot to win the game, only to be denied by Linus Ullmark. 

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for social media to erupt with questions and criticisms. 

If the goal gets taken off the board and the time gets put back on the clock, how come the penalty shot still stands? Jordan Staal had possession — but not control — leading to the offside? Should it really matter at that point because the Canes were controlling the puck for a lengthy period of time afterwards in the offensive zone?

The league has clearly opened up a Pandora’s Box with these offside reviews, which seem to be getting no less complicated as time goes on. 

The league needs to change the way offsides are reviewed

There have been a number of unintended consequences since offside reviews came into play. What was put in to reverse egregious offside errors now has entire video teams dedicated to reviewing the most miniscule of frames to try to take goals off the board if a player was even a centimetre ahead of the puck. Something that often has no bearing on a play is being examined under a microscope to take goals off the board. 

Then there’s the occasional craziness like we saw with the Sens-Canes situation where something like a penalty shot stands even after the play was ultimately deemed dead after an offside. It’s understandable why penalties still need to be called in that situation because you can’t have players taking liberties that may not be penalized if a play is called back for offside, but it’s still a strange middle ground where certain things stand and others don’t. It’s far from an ideal situation and there’s a lot of grey area in many of these offside calls. It would be a good idea for the league to re-think the way it handles these reviews and make some changes. 

While these reviews are far from perfect, one wild situation in a playoff game shouldn’t lead to overhauling the whole system. There also aren’t any easy answers.

If you’re going to have offside reviews, I don’t think you want to add even more grey area into the decision making. You can’t be determining whether an offside entry really impacted the play or a goal. Same goes for the idea that after a certain amount of time has passed the entry shouldn’t matter anymore. If the play was offside, it was offside. It’s irrelevant if the attacking team ended up with the puck in the zone for a minute before they eventually scored a goal. If an offside was called before they entered the zone, they never would’ve had the chance to score. 

Could you give each coach a limited number of challenges in a game or season? Maybe. But what happens if there’s an egregious offside and they don’t have any challenges left to use? That’s not going to be ideal, either. 

The game is being played faster than it ever has before and there are no easy solutions here. Once replay is instituted relating to a particular play it’s very hard to remove or alter it. There’s already too much grey area and judgement calls as it is in today’s NHL. We’re all just going to have to live with an imperfect system where offside reviews are concerned. 

It was just about a perfect sophomore season for Macklin Celebrini. The 19-year-old tallied 115 points, nearly willed the San Jose Sharks to a playoff spot and came home from Milan with a silver medal. Celebrini still has an outside chance to cap the campaign with the Hart Trophy as well. But there’s another distinction he could capture this off-season, as the Sharks are one of a handful of teams that are currently without a captain. With Celebrini putting the team on his back for most of the season, the next logical step could be giving the youngster the captaincy. 

Being an NHL captain is a lot of responsibility and there would be certainly be added pressure to Celebrini if he were to take it on, but everything we’ve seen so far from him in his brief career suggests he can handle it. Some thought Celebrini might be too young to represent Canada on the biggest stage at the Olympics, though he didn’t look out of place at all. If anything, Celebrini thrived on the pressure and was one of Canada’s most effective players. 

Both Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid were named captain of their respective teams at the age of 19 as well and they’ve obviously thrived throughout their careers. Celebrini appears to be cut from a similar cloth and the captaincy of the Sharks would likely only propel him to greater heights and give him even more confidence than he already has. 

If this is it for Alex Ovechkin, you can’t accuse the Washington Capitals superstar of going out quietly. Ovechkin managed to score 32 goals in his age-40 season and even if he’s lost a step or two, he still proved to be effective at doing what he does best. It remains to be seen what Ovechkin will do next season, but he hinted at the conclusion of his 21st season that he may be interested in coming back for at least one more. He clearly loves the game, but what is left for Ovechkin to accomplish at this point? He’s claimed the all-time goals record, a Stanley Cup and a bunch of other individual hardware. This could be the perfect time for him to call it quits and ride off into the sunset. 

The NHL is better with Ovechkin in it and there are plenty of reasons for him to stick around for another season. For one, he’s still an effective player if used in the right situations. The Caps could reduce his even-strength minutes and try and maximize his time on the man advantage. As long as he can hunker down on the half boards and continue to rip one timers, it’s reasonable to assume Ovechkin can still be fairly productive. Plus, Washington has a couple of talented young prospects that debuted late in the season that may entice Ovechkin to return. Ilya Protas and Cole Hutson may add enough to the Caps over a full season to get them back in the post-season next year and it would be a much better ending if Ovechkin got one more trip to Stanley Cup Playoffs before all is said and done. 

If you watched David Pastrnak in the early part of his career, there was nothing overly complicated about his game. He had a shoot-first mentality and the Boston Bruins forward’s main goal was filling the net with regularity. Slowly but surely, though, Pastrnak’s game has evolved. Once known for finishing his seasons with more goals than assists, Pastrnak has flipped the script over the past few years, sacrificing a few goals for the betterment of the team. He’s gone from a player that scored 61 goals a few years back on over 400 shots, to a player that recorded more than 70 assists in 2025-26. Pastrnak is now one of the more creative skaters in the NHL and has become much tougher to defend by adding this new element to his game. You could even make an argument he’s become an elite playmaker.

Pastrnak has recorded more than 60 assists in each of the past three campaigns, something he failed to do in any of his first nine seasons. Not only that, but this season he finished with 57 primary assists, tied with Connor McDavid for first in the league. The 29-year-old is also starting to have a big impact on his teammates by becoming a setup man. Morgan Geekie has exploded for 72 goals over the past two seasons playing with Pastrnak, and Fraser Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov, who skated with him for parts of this season, finished with 17 and 15 goals respectively. Credit to Pastrnak for understanding he needed to change his playing style after players like Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci retired. With four straight 100-point seasons, Pastrnak’s improved play is also getting more recognition around the league and might even earn him a spot on a few Hart ballots. 

DJ Smith has shown enough to be the permanent Kings head coach

Most people didn’t give the Los Angeles Kings a chance against the Colorado Avalanche in their opening-round series. The Avs are a juggernaut this season and the Kings barely squeaked into the playoffs with 90 points, the lowest seed of all 16 teams participating. However, even though the Kings are down 3-0, Los Angeles has given Colorado all it can handle and probably deserves at least a win or two. Head coach DJ Smith has this team playing inspired hockey and there were signs the Kings were turning a corner down the stretch. Los Angeles won five in a row in April to help secure a post-season spot and the team went 11-6-6 since Smith took over. Given how good the Kings have looked against the Avs and the fact that the team has played more dynamically since Smith has been in charge, should Los Angeles remove the interim tag and give him the full-time gig?

The Kings have definitely been better under Smith, but it would be premature to hand the job over to him officially at this point. Almost half of the team’s wins under Smith were outside of regulation and the Kings finished with just 22 regulation wins on the year. Only the last-place Vancouver Canucks had fewer. Plus, the Kings’ special teams were dreadful this year. Los Angeles finished 28th on the power play and 30th on the penalty kill. There’s a ton that still needs fixing with this team. 

It’s also important to remember Artemi Panarin essentially joined the team right around the time Smith was hired. How much did Panarin have to with the team’s turnaround as opposed to Smith? The Kings forward had 27 points in 26 games after arriving in Los Angeles and was probably the biggest reason the team improved down the stretch. 

This doesn’t mean Smith shouldn’t get the job, but with Bruce Cassidy and a number of up-and-coming coaches available, the Kings wouldn’t be doing their due diligence if they didn’t go through a comprehensive search first.