Bruins Beat: Challenging the Coach's Challenge

This week, rather than looking back at what was a phenomenal set of 5 games for the Bruins, I would like to take a moment and share my feelings on one of the newer aspects of the game which is the ability for Coach's to challenge a play and force the refs to review the play and look to see if it was within the rules or not. Coach's are only allowed to challenge a play in two instances, when they believe the play was offside and was not blown dead as well as if they believe a goal should be called back due to goaltender interference. At the beginning of the season I was one of the many fans who were pushing for challenges to be implemented as I was tired of seeing illegal goals stand when just a simple review would change the whole complexion of a game. After over three quarters of the season I feel like I have a decent enough sample size to truly deliver my verdict on the current state of coach's challenges.
Now unfortunately I don't have an exact number for how many goals have been called back this year in the NHL due to Coach's challenge but I can estimate that it is somewhere between 25 and 75 goals total, which is a substantial amount considering the highest scoring team in the league is barely averaging 3 goals a game so far. This shows that these reviews have been very impactful in their first year of existence yet I don't believe that they have always been positively impactful. In fact, I would personally say only about half of the goals that were called back actually deserved to be called back which is due to problems interpreting the rules of why a goal should be disallowed. On the off sides front many goals are called back due to one player being only inches offside, a distance that really should not have as much impact on the game as it does. Because of this, many coach's will use their challenge whether they think the play was off sides or not because there is such a large chance that one player might have been a few inches over the blue line when the puck enters the zone. to fix this, I believe the league needs to redefine what it means to be off sides and they should not call back goals that are preceded by a player being technically offside because his skate was in the air while entering the zone, a rule I find absolutely ridiculous. On the goaltender interference front I think that goalies should be persecuted more when they dive, as many times goalies will dive just to draw a goaltender interference call on a goal that should have counted. Also, slight nudges to the goalie (especially when hes outside the blue paint) should not in anyway be considered goaltender interference because in many cases the goalies are never actually interfered with on this plays. To summarize, I still am in favor of allowing coach's to challenge plays but the rules need to be more clear cut and consistent otherwise these challenges will continue to be abused which could effect the overall flow of play which hockey fans like myself love so much about this great game.