Kovacevic: On offside reviews, Oleksiak's gift, Hitch's mess

The hockey world continues to pay, three years later, for the Canadiens complaining about a single blown offside call.

Yeah, there are pluses to utilizing video review in a variety of ways. That includes the offside review, which was implemented for the 2015-16 season, as rules should be enforced as rules. But coaches' use of challenging countless goals over what's usually a coincidental technicality -- meaning a potential offside well before the goal was scored -- is beyond out of hand.

And that, like so much of the review concept, takes away some of the natural excitement that comes with scoring. For the participants and for the fans.

Evgeni Malkin was offside on this power-play rush Sunday night, late in the Penguins' 3-1 strangling of the Stars at PPG Paints Arena:

As a result, a goal several seconds later by Patric Hornqvist was waved off.

Did the offside impact the sequence?

Of course it did. If the Penguins don't gain the zone, theoretically, they couldn't have had the same setup for the same play.

Could Malkin's skate have been considered onside because it was in Dallas air space, so to speak?

Under a proposal floated at NHL general managers' meetings a year ago this month, that answer would have been yes. But the GMs rejected the proposal, apparently in unison, and thus it's unlikely to come up again. So the real answer is no, that elevated skate doesn't count.

Here's how I see it: This league loves rules that discriminate against offense. It's been that way for the better part of Gary Bettman's tenure and, though there's been a slight rise in scoring this season because of smart regulations against slashing and hooking, defense remains the default.

Here's how I also see it: Management, players and fans in Montreal freaked out to such an extreme in the 2015 playoffs when the Lightning won Game 6 in double-overtime on a Nikita Kucherov goal and replay showed the Bolts were clearly offside. This league remains doubly sensitive to criticism when it comes from north of the border -- look at the waves made this week by Mike Babcock in Toronto over goaltender interference -- and that's ridiculous unto itself. It doesn't affect Pittsburgh much because we know how to make a lot of noise here, too, but it's terribly unfair to the Carolina, Arizona and Florida markets, and that's really got to end someday.

Here's how I finally see it: Keep review in place for offside, but adopt a time limit at how far back the clock can be rewound. It can't be infinite. It shouldn't be more than a couple seconds. Either the team is offside on the rush that leads directly to the goal, or it isn't.

Seem fair?

• By the way, the Penguins weren't arguing about the call at the bench, as Mike Sullivan confirmed. They were arguing -- in vain, it turns out -- that Ken Hitchcock shouldn't have been able to challenge the call since he'd already used his timeout. But as referee Brad Meier explained, the NHL's replay rules don't allow for a post-timeout challenge on, say, goaltender interference, but do allow for a post-timeout challenge on offside.

Oh, for real.

"I thought I knew everything," Hornqvist said of that quirk. "That's a new one for me."

• Leave Derick Brassard alone:

• Speaking of Jim Rutherford acquisitions that soon delivered big-time, just a daily reminder here that Jamie Oleksiak -- before breaking up a three-on-one and scoring a top-shelf goal in the first period of this game -- was pawned off by Dallas this same season for a conditional fourth-round draft pick in 2019.

This was a heist of almost of Scuderian proportions.

• I asked Oleksiak if he'd yet seen a replay of his goal ...

... and when he replied he hadn't, he added, "I honestly don't even know where it went. I was just thinking about how much time was on the clock."

It was 3.7 seconds that was left. A team player thinks about that.

Either that or he knew he crushed that top right corner and was slyly bluffing.

• This might seem to some like a run-of-the-mill Sunday night whatever win against a Western opponent. Be assured it was much more than that to the home team, if only because Sullivan and his players have spoken as effusively of the Stars as of anyone they've faced.

"That's a really good hockey team," Sullivan said.

"Those guys have it all," Hornqvist said. "They're big, they're fast, they've got all that skill up front ... that's a really good team."

• It's possible Hitchcock feels that way, too, but it sure didn't show:

Don't begrudge him. His Stars have the NHL's 10th-best overall record at 38-25-6, just two points fewer than the Penguins' 84, but the outrageous Central Division has the Predators, Jets and Wild shoving them down into a Western wild-card spot, and the Avalanche, Kings, Flames and Blues are all within five points in the other direction.

• Don't have sympathy for Hitchcock, either. Never. He sent his guys after the Penguins' stars last month in Dallas, and he did so again in this one. The difference this time was that the Penguins' stars, especially Malkin, were ready for it.

"We knew they're physical," Malkin said. "We wanted to come out hitting."

You can bet that's why Hitchcock sang a song about the Penguins' stars -- "I thought their best players were great" -- while panning his own, as seen above. Count the blessings around here, because Sullivan's never publicly disrespected Crosby or Malkin.

You can also bet that's why Hitchcock shrugged when a Dallas reporter asked about the hat trick of boneheaded crosschecking penalties his guys -- Marc Methot, Tyler Pitclick, Greg Pateryn -- took.

"No," he answered. "Look, we've been disciplined lately. This is ... both teams took unnecessary penalties. A couple of them were poor stick positioning. To me, that's not the issue."

OK. Pitlick took four minor penalties. Because he positioned his stick poorly into the bases of people's spines.

Never change, Hitch.

• Final thought on the Stars: John Klingberg took a cheap whack at Malkin after the latter's clean hit early, but he's one whale of a defenseman, among the league's best. Took 27 shifts, never dropped a bead of sweat. Maybe the most elegant lateral skater in the sport.

• The NHL hasn't had a 50-goal scorer since 2015-16, when Alexander Ovechkin had exactly that many. The NHL hasn't had a 50-goal scorer not named Ovechkin since 2011-12, when Malkin had 50 and Steven Stamkos 60. The NHL didn't have anyone at all reach 50 last season. All of which is ridiculous, given the history of the annual milestone, and should forever scar Gary Bettman's tenure as commissioner.

That said, here we are with a really fun scoring race on both fronts.

Ovechkin and Winnipeg prodigy Patrik Laine both have 40 goals, and two participants in this very game -- Malkin at 39 now, Seguin at 36 -- also have a reasonable shot at 50. Not to mention a revived Eric Staal at 37 in Minnesota.

And in points, Malkin is now just one behind Kucherov's 88 for the league lead.

When was the last time anyone talked about a scoring pursuit of any kind in this league?

More goals! Fewer waved-off goals!

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY