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It’s no secret that the National Hockey League is suffering from an ongoing decline of offence, and it’s not getting any better, folks.

The league purports to be taking steps to open up the game, some of which have worked in a limited way, others which have backfired spectacularly. For example, 3-on-3 overtime resulted in 168 games being decided in the 5-minute extra session this past season, 32 more than had been in 2014-15. The percentage of 3-point games decided before the shootout surged from 44% to 61%.

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At the same time, the NHL introduced its wrong-headed Coach’s Challenge in 2015-16, which ranks second only to the Bettman Point on the long list of “Cockamamie Ideas Introduced During the Dead Puck Era”. Brought in under the pretence that it would resolve controversies on certain types of plays, the Coach’s Challenge has instead introduced a firestorm of new controversies, enraged coaches and fans, and cascaded into infernal delays which have all but removed the spontaneity from what used to be a fast sport. Moreover, by its very definitions the challenge was certain to disallow more goals than it would allow — indeed, in the case of the insane “offside challenge” it can only do that. In the gimmick’s first — and one hopes, only — season, just 3 goals were added after a challenge, all on goaltender interference calls. Meanwhile no fewer than 65 were taken off the board (28 to G.I., 37 to retroactive offside calls on zone entries preceding apparent goals). That’s a net difference of -62 goals, about one every 20 games for an overall decline of 0.05 goals per game, or 1% of overall offence. Not only is the genie out of the bottle, but this exasperating wrinkle in the name of video technology appears set to derail the playoffs altogether.