Story by
We have our first goalie interference controversy of the season!
- Story by
- We have our first goalie interference controversy of the season!
We have our first goalie interference controversy of the season!
It took barely any time at all. The 2025-26 NHL season is young, but the league already has its first goaltender interference dispute, a topic that consumed general managers at their annual spring meeting just months ago.
On Thursday night, the league and officials determined that Minnesota Wild forward Ryan Hartman's presence in the crease impaired Juuse Saros' ability to play his position prior to Yakov Trenin's goal.
Advertisement
The call immediately drew backlash on line and… on the Wild's bench.
The frustration around these calls has been building for years. Last March, GMs were shown roughly 70 clips of challenged goals from the 2024-25 season in an effort to align all 32 organizations on how the process is supposed to work.
That session was necessary because goalie interference challenges had reached a six-season high. Through the first 1,048 games of last season, coaches challenged goals or no-goal calls for interference 105 times, the most since the current penalty system was introduced in 2019-20. Sixty of those were successfully overturned, also the highest rate under the existing rules.
Advertisement
Commissioner Gary Bettman was even more pointed about how coaches were using the challenge. "When anybody says, 'I thought I'd give it a shot,' or 'I think it's 50/50,' that's not the standard," Bettman said. "The standard is was it really a glaring mistake so that the judgment of the officials on the ice should be overturned."
All video reviews are handled by the NHL's situation room in Toronto, in consultation with on-ice officials. The criteria include whether contact was deliberate or incidental, whether it occurred inside or outside the crease, whether the goaltender had a chance to reset, and whether an offensive or defensive player caused the disruption.
Not sure if this will ever change. We are only a couple of days into the 2026-27 NHL season and we already have our first goaltending interference controversy of the campaign.
