It's Time For The NHL To Just Put Connor McDavid In Charge Of Offsides Reviews
Everybody can agree that video replay in sports has gotten way out of control. From offside reviews in hockey, to what deems a catch in the NFL, to VAR in soccer. Pretty much every sport, besides baseball, has gotten broken down to a fraction of an inch. One minute you're playing a game, the next minute you have NASA quality camera equipment being broken out to see if 7 millimeters should decide the outcome.
Connor McDavid has had enough of this shit.
I understand the desire to get the call right. I can appreciate the fact that the officials want to be objective when making these calls. But stopping a game for long enough for everybody to get out of their seats and take a piss and grab a beer at the concession stand just to determine if this play is offside or not...
Might be a too much.
So there are a couple of simple solutions here. The first is that you can put a shot clock on how long these reviews are allowed to last. If you can't come up with a call within 90 seconds of watching replays from every angle, then clearly the play wasn't egregious enough for it to make a difference. The second is just putting a punch of regular fans from across the league in a room together every night, give them a case of beer to watch all the games, and ask them what they think the call should be. If it looks like it should be a catch in the NFL, they'd call it a catch. If it looks like Draisaitl was offside on this play, they'd call it offside. Just use your eyes and common sense to make the call, and not rely on zooming in 750%. Or if you don't trust drunk hockey fans enough, you can just leave these calls up to Connor McDavid because clearly he gets it.
Sports were always meant to be a game of inches. That's what makes every play so much more exciting. But once you start breaking it down to fractions of an inch, that's where you lose pretty much everybody.