Colorado Avalanche Fans Amazed by New NHL Rules v Blues

The Colorado Avalanche learned about the new Coach’s Challenge the hard way in the game against the St. Louis Blues.

The Colorado Avalanche lost to the St. Louis Blues in the Pepsi Center. After last season, that’s not exactly amazing.

It was how they scored and had had goals disallowed that’s amazing.

The first goal of the game was a gorgeous power play goal by rookie Alexander Kerfoot. It wasn’t amazing in being as strange as some of the other goals, but it was a beauty:

As Mark Rycroft observed, if you give a Harvard grad two tries at it, he’s going to put it in the back of the net.

Also, if you give a Harvard grad a wide open net, he’s going to score. Here’s Kerfoot doing just that:

While that was a weird way for St. Louis Blues goalie Carter Hutton to play hockey, still not the most amazing goal of game.

The most amazing goal of the game early on in the third. Blake Comeau pushed defenseman Robert Bortuzzo into Hutton outside of the crease. If he’d whipped around and scored right then, it would have been goalie interference.

However, watch Bortuzzo and Hutton get tangled up:

Bortuzzo and Hutton are tripping all over each other for a full five seconds, as Rycroft observed “like two cowboys lassoing each other.” That’s nothing in the real world, but it’s enough time for Comeau to regain his footing, push his way to the front of the net, bang the ice for the puck, skate backwards some more, bang his stick against the ice again, and finally receive a pass from Colin Wilson.

Oh, and manage to shoot the puck into a net that doesn’t have a Blues player within six feet. (Last year he would have missed the net or broken his stick banging for the puck.)

More from Mile High Sticking

The Blues called for a Coach’s Challenge for goalie interference. However, not only did Bortuzzo and Hutton take five seconds to get untangled from each other, but Bortuzzo was going to plow into Hutton regardless of what Comeau did.

That was an amazing goal, and one that will go down in the annals of Colorado Avalanche weird goals.

The other weird play didn’t go the Avalanche’s way. At first it looked like a defensive breakdown for the St. Louis Blues — and, hey, isn’t it nice for it to be the other team for a change.

Well, apparently Sven Andrighetto was offsides, and that’s why the Blues pulled up. So the sweet goal by Mikko Rantanen that came afterward was disallowed.

Start from the 3:15 mark:

The amazing thing was that the overturned call came as the result of a Coach’s Challenge. From the St. Louis Blues. Who had already challenged the Comeau goal for goalie interference. What?

Well, the new rule is that if a team calls a Coach’s Challenge for offsides, they get a penalty if they’re wrong. There’s no timeout needed as with the offsides call. Therefore, coaches can call it at will.

Here’s the rule:

“A play that results in a “GOAL” call on the ice where the defending team asserts that the play should have been stopped by reason of an “Off-side” infraction by the attacking team.“New for 2017-18: If the result of the challenge is that the play was “On-side”, the goal shall count and the team that issued the challenge shall be assessed a minor penalty for delaying the game.”

In fact, the rule doesn’t implicitly state that a team may call as many offside Coach’s Challenges as they want, or call them after using up their goalie interference challenge, but that’s the way the NHL has chosen to interpret it.

Next: Enjoy the Little Things with the Avs

This was also a game that saw coach Jared Bednar bench — and then call out — certain players for being “passengers” and not showing up to play. Unfortunately that included Nail Yakupov, who was playing in his 300th game.

And the Colorado Avalanche have lost J.T. Compher, who was having a solid rookie season, to a broken thumb. And both Tyson Jost and Patrik Nemeth left the game with lower body injuries. Good times.

Let’s end this on a positive not. At least rookie Alexander Kerfoot had an excellent game with two goals and an assist.

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