from Damien Cox at the Toronto Star,

Sorry folks, there is no simple, straightforward, one-stroke-of-the-pen solution to the NHL’s goalie interference problem. As much as people from Mike Babcock to Jeremy Roenick are shrieking “Fix it!” and making noisy headlines, it’s just not that simple.

It’s taken the better part of three decades for the league to gradually create this thorny problem, and now there’s just no simple means of undoing all that’s been done. There are layers of history to this, and a league that always prefers elastic rules to black-and-white regulations isn’t going to be able to fix the controversial problem by this year’s playoffs and probably not by next season, either.

Remember, the league once had a relatively ironclad crease rule. Not even a baby toe in the crease was allowed. But people found it too nit-picky, and when Brett Hull scored the Stanley Cup winner in 1999 with his foot clearly in the crease, forcing NHL officials to simply make up a rules interpretation after the fact, it signalled the end of that method of litigating crease congestion.

Had that happened last spring, the guess here is the NHL would have stuck with the rule. As Gary Bettman’s regime has gained confidence over the years when it comes to changing rules, it has become far more immune to the criticism that always accompanies any kind of change in this conservative sport. Remember all the bellyaching about new slashing regs and faceoff rules last October? The league simply stuck with it, and by Christmas all the whining had disappeared.

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