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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6zbBflvcws&feature=youtu.be&t=27s

“We always go into the playoffs nervous as hell,” said Colin Campbell, the NHL’s senior executive vice-president of hockey operations.

“There’s always something. Someone may say, ‘well, this only happened (nine) times,’ but bless his soul, (late Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed) Snider, he never forgot the offside against the Islanders (in the 1980 Stanley Cup final), nor did Calgary forget about the play where (Martin) Gelinas (appeared to score in the 2004 Cup final). They felt the puck was across the line. They don’t forget and we don’t either, so we want to try to be perfect on every call.

“We’re nervous no matter what. Something is going to happen.”

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The main issue during Tuesday’s meetings concerned the ambiguity of the offside rule during a coach’s challenge.

According to rule 83.1 of the NHL rulebook, “A player is offside when both skates are completely over the leading edge of the blue line.”

The problem is when one of the skates is off the ice. Some GMs wanted to change the rule to include the plane of the blue line, which could result in fewer goals being called back. But even then, Campbell said the change would have minimal effect.

“Twenty-nine times this year out of 100 offside calls, we had to look at a skate in the air,” said Campbell. “One of the rationales was if you did not make that the applicable fact that it was in the air and still over the blue line it would be OK, we’d have 29 less situations where you were looking at an offside play. One of the arguments made was the players might just change their point of emphasis to inside the blue line. I don’t know. I was hoping we could convince them but we couldn’t, so it’s status quo.”