The Stanley Cup final is many things — good things, mostly. For all of the league’s problems — all of its incompetence, all of its self-inflicted wounds — there’s something about the playoffs. There’s something about this series. We were lucky enough to start another one here Monday.
For a second, though, forget how pretty the overall picture can look, and marvel at the NHL’s limitless capacity to watch its own dumb decisions fuse with catastrophic luck. It’s funny because it has to be.
Not three hours after commissioner Gary Bettman sat at a table in PPG Paints Arena, praising the efficacy of the coach’s challenge rule for offside calls while skirting around the issue that makes people hate it in the first place, Game 1 of the Final turned on that exact rule.