# The stick across the line does not matter

A player can reach well into the zone with their stick, or lean over the line, and stay onside as long as the skates are back.

**Onside** — Onside: the trailing skate had not broken the plane when the puck crossed.

Decided under NHL Rule 83 — Off-side.

> Not an official ruling. This works through a published decision procedure from the inputs you supplied; it cannot see the play. In a real call the hard part is almost always judging the inputs — where a foot was at the exact frame, whether a touch was deliberate — rather than applying the rule. Match officials decide, and competition-specific variations and video review protocols are outside what this models.

## How it got there

| # | Step | Finding | Decisive |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | What decides it | Skates, and only skates. The stick does not matter, and neither does the body — a player leaning over the line with the puck on their stick is onside if their skates are back. The stick at 180cm was ignored. | no |
| 2 | Has the skate broken the plane? | No — 3.0cm on the neutral-zone side of the leading edge. | yes |
| 3 | Does the skate need to be on the ice? | The skate is on the ice, though since 2021 it would not have to be. | no |

## Read before relaying this

### Skates decide it, not the stick and not the body (caution)

A player can reach across the line with their stick, lean over it, or carry the puck ahead of themselves, and remain onside so long as their skates have not preceded the puck. This is the opposite of soccer, where the foremost scoring part of the body is exactly what is measured.

### Since 2021 a skate in the air can still be onside (caution)

The blue line is treated as a plane extending upward from its leading edge. If the skate has not broken that plane when the puck crosses, the player is onside — whether or not the blade is touching the ice. The change was made to stop offside reviews turning on pixel-level judgements about ice contact.

### The in-air allowance does not extend to tagging up (info)

When clearing the zone to negate a DELAYED offside, the skate must contact the blue line. Being above the plane is not enough. Two rules that sound like one, and the exception is where most explanations go wrong.

**What to do:** Set situation to tag-up to work a delayed-offside clearance instead.

### The picture freezes when the puck crosses, not when the player does (info)

Positions are judged at the moment the puck crosses the leading edge of the blue line. A player already deep in the zone is not offside if the puck got there first.

### Applying the rule is the easy half (caution)

This computed a verdict from a skate position you supplied. In a real review the argument is entirely about that position in the frame the puck crossed — which is why the rule was changed to remove one of the two things that had to be judged.

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Canonical URL: https://sports-rules.gumballtools.com/offside/stick-across-the-blue-line
JSON API: `GET https://sports-rules.gumballtools.com/api/v1/offside?sport=soccer&attacker=40&ball=30&secondLastDefender=35`
MCP endpoint: `https://sports-rules.gumballtools.com/api/mcp`