Does the NHL need more replay reviews for penalties and scrums or would they slow the game?

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour figures the NHL has the best officials in the world. He still thinks they could use some help in sorting through the chaos — both before and after the whistle — that comes with the NHL playoffs.

Brind'Amour has backed the idea of using more replay reviews to look not just at penalty calls but everything going on in those testier-with-every-round scrums. Not everyone agrees with Brind'Amour when it comes to reviewing penalty calls, though his larger point stands about getting the right call with the stakes involved in chasing the Stanley Cup.

“You can’t get better officials. We have the best — I want to make sure everybody understands that — I know no one else could do a better job,” Brind’Amour said with his team up 2-0 in a second-round series against Philadelphia. “But man, it’s just hard to see some of the penalties that are getting called, that if you just took a quick peek, you’d go, ‘Oh wait a minute, that’s not what happened.’

“We’ll get to it at some point, but I think they could use a little hand.”

Playoff games this year are averaging 10.6 penalties and 25.1 penalty minutes through Tuesday, according to SportRadar. That is the highest average number of penalties since 2009 (10.9), while this is just the second time since 2012 that the average of penalty minutes has exceeded 25 per game (it was 28 PIMs per game in 2023).

NHL officials can review calls for non-fighting major and match penalties, then either confirm it or reduce it to a two-minute minor. They can also review double-minor high-sticking penalties to determine whether the stick involved actually belonged to the player being penalized.

“I don’t think there’s a harder job to officiate, and our guys don’t get the credit they deserve,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Wednesday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show."

“I mean, they are moving with the flow of the game. They’ve got to skate like the players, it’s physical, they’ve got to stay out of the way. There’s a lot going on really fast. And it is remarkable how good a job they do and how much they get right. And video replay for us has really vindicated their performance even more.”

Brind’Amour, whose Hurricanes are the top seed in the Eastern Conference, first raised the topic after a first-round sweep of Ottawa. That came after Senators forward Ridly Greig delivered two sucker punches to Hurricanes defenseman Sean Walker — the second an uppercut to the face — while Walker was engaged with Senators forward Warren Foegele.

Greig wasn't penalized in that 4-2 series-closing loss, though the NHL later suspended Greig for two regular-season games. Compounding matters, Brind'Amour said, was the fact the Hurricanes emerged from that sequence shorthanded. He suggested having someone work solely to monitor replays and assist on-ice officials.

“The only reason (Greig) did that was because he looked, no one's watching, doesn't get called for it, and we somehow ended up short on that,” Brind'Amour said. “That's wrong. That's not right. Just get it right."

The issue is how best to accomplish that if expanded replay usage is one day adopted by the league.

“That’s a good question because like a lot of times guys get away with stuff in there,” Buffalo Sabres forward Josh Dunne said about more replay reviews of scrums in particular.

“Some guy starts, another guy gets the penalty for it," he said. "It’s hard, it’s a hard line. It’s why it’s so much on the judgment of the refs where it’s like they can only see what they see, where it’s like you never really know how these things get going.”

His coach, meanwhile, chuckled that he's “not a huge fan of another video review."

“I don't mind Rod's thinking at all,” said Lindy Ruff, whose Sabres are facing Montreal in Round 2. “I just think, boy, if now we're going to review something, we start reviewing scrums, I just think players will start taking acting lessons.”

Then again, some of that is already built into the game. Brind'Amour proved prophetic in pointing that out before Game 1 against the Flyers.

“It is impossible to referee our sport live, it really is — it's just everything's happpening so fast, now you’re getting embellishment everywhere,” Brind’Amour said then. “Sticks aren’t even coming close to you, they’re doing this (leans his head back) because why? Because if this goes like this (raises arm), you’re getting a call. But if you've got a guy on the review that said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s embellishment,’ it would be out of the game."

Days later, Hurricanes forward Jordan Martinook was penalized for high sticking while replays showed Flyers defenseman Nick Seeler grabbing Martinook's stick and essentially hitting himself in the face to sell the call.

Dunne said he worried about the idea of slowing the game too much with more replay reviews, while Colorado Avalanche forward Brock Nelson said he largely “liked where the game is at.”

“I don't want to make too many adjustments or critiques to the game,” Nelson said before the Avalanche opened its series against Minnesota.

“I’m a traditionalist. The more rules you make, the more you have," said Anaheim Ducks coach Joel Quenneville, whose team is battling the Vegas Golden Knights in Round 2. "There’s always some extenuating consequences off of things like that. We got a lot of rules, so either way, I like to just get it right and move on. Either way it is, we’ll move on.”

AP Hockey Writer John Wawrow in Buffalo, New York, and AP Sports Writers Mark Anderson in Las Vegas and Pat Graham in Denver contributed to this report.

AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Referee Gord Dwyer (19) announces a call while referee Francis Charron (6) espeaks to Carolina Hurricanes' Jordan Staal (11) during the third period of Game 2 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup second-round playoff series against the Philadelphia Flyers in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, May 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker)

Carolina Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind'Amour, center top, protests a call during the third period of Game 2 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup second-round playoff series against the Philadelphia Flyers in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, May 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker)

Ottawa Senators left wing Brady Tkachuk, center left, and Carolina Hurricanes defenseman K'andre Miller (19) fight during the second period of Game 4 in a first-round NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series in Ottawa, Ontario, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)

Vegas Golden Knights and Utah Mammoth players fight during the first period of Game 5 of a first-round NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series Wednesday, April 29, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

PARIS (AP) — France’s aircraft carrier strike group is moving south of the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea in preparation for a potential French-British mission in the Strait of Hormuz, French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday.

The deployment puts Europe’s most powerful warship closer to the strait whose effective closure has come to epitomize the war in Iran, stranding hundreds of ships and triggering what the International Energy Agency calls the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.

The defensive effort is distinct from the U.S. “Project Freedom” that launched Monday and was paused by President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening.

The repositioning of the nuclear-powered Charles de Gaulle and its escorts comes as part of a proposed mission championed by France and Britain to restore maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz as soon as conditions allow.

It "may help restore confidence among shipowners and insurers,” Macron said on X. “It remains distinct from the parties at war.”

Macron, who spoke with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday, said he also intends to raise the matter with Trump.

“A return to calm in the Strait will help advance negotiations on nuclear issues, ballistic matters, and the regional situation,” Macron wrote. “Europeans… will play their part.”

Col. Guillaume Vernet, spokesperson for the French armed forces chief of staff, stressed that the Hormuz coalition — drawn up by France, Britain and more than 50 nations — will not begin operating until two thresholds are cleared: The threat to shipping must come down, and the maritime industry must be reassured enough to use the strait.

Even then, he told The Associated Press, any operation would require the agreement of neighboring countries. That would include Iran, which borders the strait and effectively closed it by attacking and threatening ships after the war began on Feb. 28 with attacks by the U.S. and Israel.

Vernet did not specify when the carrier would reach its destination. He said the carrier was being positioned to be close enough to act if and when the conditions are met: “The French position is the same since the beginning — defensive posture, respecting international law."

War-risk insurance premiums for transits of the strait have risen four to five times above preconflict levels, according to industry estimates.

For now, insurance premiums are so high that "not a single ship will jeopardize their trip or go there,” Vernet said.

Washington has not been part of the French-British planning, which observers have said echoes the European “coalition of the willing” that Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer assembled to support Ukraine.

“We want to send the message that not only are we ready to secure the Strait of Hormuz, but that we are also capable of doing so,” a French top official said, speaking anonymously in line with the French presidency’s customary practices.

Early in the war, France sought a multinational initiative to reestablish freedom of navigation in the strait. Macron and Starmer hosted dozens of countries at a Paris summit on April 17, and military planners from more than 30 nations later finalized operational details.

The Charles de Gaulle had been ordered from the Baltic to the eastern Mediterranean soon after the war began in what the French presidency described as an “unprecedented” mobilization that also includes eight frigates and two Mistral-class amphibious assault ships.

Meanwhile, French Rafale fighters based at Al Dhafra airbase in the United Arab Emirates have been intercepting Iranian drones and missiles over the Gulf state since the war began under a long-standing defense pact with Abu Dhabi that puts some 900 French personnel on the Gulf’s southern shore.

Associated Press writer Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.

FILE - French President Emmanuel Macron, center right, visits the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, during his visit to Cyprus, March 9, 2026. (Gonzalo Fuentes/Pool Photo via AP, File)