A brief history of skate-in-crease reviews, an awful rule the NHL might be going back to

NHL general managers are meeting this week, and one of the items expected to be discussed is the replay review system. It's mostly working fine, the league's power brokers seem to agree. But reviews are taking too long, and maybe we should learn from the NFL 's recent changes that allow replay officials to nudge referees over missed calls. And, of course, people are mad about goaltender interference reviews. As always.

This latest flare-up in the debate was prompted by a close call in a recent game between the Jets and Lightning . That one initially went against Winnipeg and was upheld after a coach's challenge, much to the frustration of Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck . You wouldn't think that "guy whose whole job is preventing goals thinks goal he allowed shouldn't have counted" would be major news, but here we are.

It's all led to another round of the usual "nobody knows how interference works" discourse, the sort of performative confusion that certain fans, media and even coaches love to put on whenever a call goes against their team (but weirdly, never when it goes the other way). It's also led to the latest appearance of what seems like a reasonable question: Why is this all so subjective? Why can't we just have a clear-cut rule that works the same way every time, and that we don't have to argue about?

It's a fair question. And apparently, some of you are either too young or too new to the sport to know that there's an answer. So on behalf of us old timers, here's the short version: We tried that, it was a disaster and everyone hated it.

We also vowed never to do it again, but lately it feels like that might not last. If the "just get it right" crowd forms a coalition with the "just keep it simple" brigade, maybe we're headed back to the cut-and-dried interference calls of the past. It might even be inevitable because if we can't stomach any ambiguity on these calls, then we don't really have any other options.

But if so, we should at least know what we're getting into. And if you're the sort of fan who's found themselves wondering why we can't just do this the easy way, you should know the history of how we got here.

How it started

The goal crease has existed for almost as long as the NHL itself, having first been painted on the ice in the 1930s . Ever since, the league has tinkered with the size and shape of the crease, with the original rectangle being phased into the now-familiar semicircle starting in 1986. Rules around interference changed too, but the bottom line was understood: The crease belongs to the goaltender, and attacking players aren't allowed in unless the puck got there first.

Most fans understood that at a basic level and controversies were relatively rare. You'd certainly get the occasional argument over a goal, including some that linger on decades later . But in the days before replay review, there wasn't much be to done about them. We got mad, we waved our glasses at the ref and then we moved on, as we did for any other missed call.

But in the early 1990s, the league was trying to drag the sport away from its reputation as a violent and dangerous spectacle. Bench-clearing brawls had been essentially eliminated, the instigator rule was about to transform the enforcer's role, and harsher rules and suspensions were targeting stickwork. As part of that movement, concerns were raised about goaltender safety.

Initially, at least, the consensus was near unanimous. Goaltenders should be protected from crease intruders, and not just by a wishy-washy "you know it when you see it" sort of judgment that had previously rested with the whims of the referees.

The league, it was widely agreed, needed something more specific. And so that's what we got.

The original change

The big change came in the 1991-92 season, and the new rules were crystal clear. Clear-cut, you might say.

If the attacking team was in the crease when a goal was scored, it wouldn't count. That was it. If the puck wasn't there and you were, then any goal would be waved off. And on top of that, you'd get a two-minute penalty.

Harsh, sure. But it was exactly the sort of approach so many of today's fans seem to be begging for. There wasn't room for philosophical arguments about whether the interference had affected the goalie or by how much, whether he had time to reset, whether contact was incidental, or if it could have been avoided and by who. There didn't need to be contact at all. Much like offside, intent didn't matter. Where was your skate? If you're in the crease, it's no goal. Nice and simple, the way we all seem to want it.

It took all of one month before everyone was complaining about it.

The problem, as explained in this from The New York Times in November 1991 , was that the referees took this new rule and then actually called it as written. As that says, while the "spirit of the law is obvious and justifiable," the problem was that "so far, the referees have been calling the harsh letter of the law." If a forward had the tip of his toe in the crease at one side of the net and a goal was scored at the other, it would be waved off.

One owner summarized the feeling bluntly, saying "We made a mistake" and "The rule about the goal crease was an error." OK, that owner was Norm Green, and maybe he's not exactly the sort of beloved figure I want to have on my side in this sort of debate. But on this specific issue, he was right. Jim Gregory, the league's VP of hockey operations, acknowledged teams hadn't understood "the severity of the rule" they were voting for, and many now wanted it overturned. There was even talk of trying to get a unanimous vote from the board of governors to scrap the new rule mid-season and go back to the old way.

A reminder: This is one month into the "clear-cut" era.

That vote never happened. Instead, the league and its officials handled the complaints the way they often do: by slowly but surely easing up on enforcement of the new rule, moving back toward the previous rules without explicitly acknowledging them. Over time, referees largely stopped calling the truly meaningless crease violations, focusing instead on plays that actually impacted a goaltender's ability to do his job.

That wasn't clear-cut anymore, but just about everyone liked it better. And it could work, because of a key factor you may have already spotted: We haven't mentioned anything about instant replay yet.

The bigger change

The NHL was already using replay in the early 90s, but it was extremely limited. In those days, the only situation that could be reviewed involved whether or not a puck entered the net. The "how" didn't matter, since that could get subjective. The league was only interested in using replay to determine whether the puck crossed the line or not.

That worked reasonably well most of the time, although you'd occasionally get some truly bizarre outcomes that prompted outraged calls for more use of replay. With technology improving and other sports moving in that direction, it was inevitable that the NHL would too. And so, in time for the 1996-1997 season, the NHL expanded its replay review protocol to include crease violations.

At the time, it didn't necessarily feel like a massive change, and I don't remember it being an especially big story. After all, we already had a rule in place — adding replay review would simply ensure that, to borrow a phrase from modern times, we'd just get it right. Who could be against that?

A lot of us, as it turns out. In what should have been a valuable lesson on the dangers of unintended consequences, fans learned there's a big difference between a call that officials are supposed to make and one they have to make, especially if they have replay looking over their shoulder to make sure. We saw more goals being waved off, a lot more, and fans began to express frustration at how often it was happening. The rule itself hadn't changed, but its impact had. (In fact, I'd be willing to say most fans of the era don't even remember the skate-in-crease rule being a thing for the five seasons before the replay element was added.)

Suddenly, it felt like any goal could be wiped out due to "interference" nobody had even noticed. Fans being fans, they were mildly annoyed when they saw it happen to other teams and irate when it happened to their own. Worse, the league was training us not to get too excited about the goals we did see, because there was always a good chance it would vanish on a technicality.

I'll pause here so modern fans can think about whether any of this sounds familiar .

I'm not sure where this clip comes from, but it includes a pair of controversial goals, one of which stands and one of which comes back. Stick around to the end and you'll get an exhausted-looking guy named Wayne Gretzky explaining why the rule isn't working. He probably doesn't know much about selling the sport.

In researching this piece, I came across this fascinating essay by sportswriter and broadcaster Stu Hackel . It's written in defense of the increasingly unpopular reviews, with a cheeky headline of "What's Wrong With Getting the Call Right?" Hackel had helped the NHL design its initial foray into replay review, and he was writing during the 1997 playoffs amid an outcry over how many goals were being wiped out. According to Hackel's piece, the league was averaging nearly one interference review per game through 62 matchups — 54 in all, with 40 of them resulting in overturned goals.

Hackel's defense is that rules are rules, and the one in question is unambiguous. If anything, he argues, the problem is that "the system worked too well." It's a reasonable argument, one that wouldn't feel out of place in today's debates. And he makes the very valid point that hockey fans seem to want it both ways when it comes to subjectivity in the rulebook, writing that "many of the same voices that lobby for less ambiguity in officiating want to junk a rule that provides clarity."

Hackel was right, at least as far as the NHL was concerned. They kept the rule essentially as-is, determined to ride out fan complaints and stick to a clear-cut approach.

We all know what happened next ...

The Goal

On June 19, 1999, Brett Hull scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal with one skate planted firmly in the crease .

This was, to put it mildly, controversial. For eight years, fans had been told that a skate in the crease negated a goal. For the last three of those years, they'd seen that rule enforced by replay, over and over again, to the point where they were sick of it. Now one of the greatest goal scorers in history had just scored an overtime goal to win the Stanley Cup with a skate in the crease, and the league was telling us it was fine.

And ... they may have been right. There are still some who question the call to this day, but the league has always maintained that the goal was good. Their reasoning is that Hull had control of the puck, and while that's a surprisingly ambiguous term in the rulebook , there was apparently a memo sent out to teams just weeks before Hull's goal that clarified those plays should count. And to their credit, the league even immediately sent its director of officiating onto Hockey Night in Canada to explain how the rule was meant to work.

You don't have to be playing the contrarian to say the league got it right ( although it helps ). But ultimately, it didn't matter. Fans outside of Dallas were furious. Years and years of perfectly good goals taken off the board based on a rule nobody seemed to like, and then a Cup-winner is allowed to stand without so much as an on-ice review, ruining what should have been a magic moment . It was as if three seasons of frustration came crashing down, a literal worst-case scenario for a controversial rule.

The league scrapped the replay review days later.

That's not an exaggeration; it took all of three days from Hull's goal to the announcement that the rules would change . Gary Bettman still defended the clear-cut approach, mildly, insisting that "(t)he rule was fine." But he conceded that the league needed to make a change. So did just about everyone else.

Replay review would no longer apply to goaltender interference and the crease rule. It would be up to the referee's judgment, and if we didn't like how a call turned out, we'd all just have to live with it. And for the next 15 seasons, we did.

The lesson had been learned. Until it wasn't.

The legacy

Replay review for interference was reintroduced for the 2015-16 season, with several important twists. It would now be initiated by a coach's challenge, and a delay-of-game penalty for unsuccessful challenges was later added. Reviews were no longer just based on the crease, with additional factors now considered.

And — stop me if you've heard this one before — nobody thinks it's working .

Which brings us back to this week, and this latest controversy, and the question of why all this can't just be simple and clear-cut. The problem with the current implementation is one I highlighted in my explainer on how the goaltender interference rule works — it's extremely subjective. It's not well-suited to review, because it doesn't matter how much you slow down a replay, you're not going to get everyone to agree on factors like intent, or how much time a goalie needs to reset, or when swatting at a loose puck turns into pitchforking a pad. There's too much room for opinion, and guess what — every fan's opinion is that the call should go their team's way every time. When it doesn't, we get mad, and we pretend it's the rule's fault.

And yes, there's a simple answer: Scrap the subjectivity and make the rule clear-cut. I really hope this little trip through history has convinced you that that's a terrible idea.

If your response is that we should make the rule clear-cut in a different way, one that isn't as silly as the 1990s version ... well, please feel free to explain what that looks like. I've tried. Strip away any and all the subjectivity, and pretty soon you're just left with "is anyone in the crease," and we're right back in 1997.

Instead, my solution is still the one I've proposed before: scrap replay review for goaltender interference . Make essentially the same choice the NHL did back in 1999, days after its poorly implemented replay system had become an international embarrassment. Understand that these calls have to be subjective, that subjective calls don't work with replay, and that it's better to live with the occasional questionable call than to promise perfection that you can't deliver.

In fact, I don't think I can put it any better than someone else already has, so I'll just leave you with their quote to consider the next time there's an interference review controversy and everyone is freaking out and feigning confusion. Remember these words:

"To rely on replay too much isn't good. The fact that so many people didn't understand the rule and how it was applied in that situation — and that you had controversy on a correct call — simply cemented the fact that there was a better way to do it."

That's Gary Bettman in 1999 , by the way. What do they say about those who don't learn from history?

(Photo: Matthew Huang / Icon Sportswire via )