BOSTON -- After a postseason beset by officiating controversies, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said the league will explore expanding replay review.

Considering how candidly Bettman vented on Monday -- "It would be good if I kept my head from exploding," the commissioner said of his reaction to the uncalled hand pass that led to a game-winning goal in the Western Conference final -- it would be shocking if change isn't implemented for the 2019-20 season.

Though general managers and the competition committee will meet next month to discuss any alterations, Bettman said the league will gather ideas and feedback "from all the constituent groups." That should include players. To take the pulse of how they've felt about the controversies, ESPN asked several players in the Stanley Cup Final for their preferred solution.

"Get rid of video reviews, that's the problem," Bruins winger Brad Marchand said, sternly. "When you start bringing in all the video reviews, the refs are getting crucified. They're out there to do a job. Start taking it away from them, little by little, then it's going to escalate. Now they're going to want video reviews for pucks hitting the net or hand passes, so how much are you going to take away from the refs? The only way to do it is to do all of it with video review or none of it."

When asked which side he leaned toward, Marchand said: "I don't care either way. Just pick one. We're in between right now."

Indeed, a large issue for players is the gray area in which they're currently living. Some plays can be reviewed, such as goalie interference or offside. Others -- such as the hand pass in the Sharks-Blues game, or the uncalled puck off the netting that led to a goal in the Bruins-Blue Jackets game in the second round -- cannot. Frankly, it feels arbitrary.

"We've all talked about it, being such a hot-button topic," Bruins defenseman John Moore said. "The issue with video replay is: Where do you draw the line? If you allow it, and you don't allow certain things, then you have situations like we've seen all throughout the playoffs. You look at certain sports like tennis, right? It feels like they've really perfected the video review. You know the technology is there, so it's frustrating. It's a conversation that needs to take place with the powers that be moving forward. It is an imperfect system."

Moore went further.

"If there are individuals seeing this happen and they're stuck in a neutral location, then it's frustrating they can't step in and make a wrong call right," Moore said.

That leads to one popular player suggestion: an off-ice official who can see things from a different vantage point and interject. During the Eastern Conference final, Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour suggested taking a referee off the ice and putting him in the penalty box. St. Louis Blues winger Chris Thorburn thought the press box would be better.

"People have brought up having someone upstairs," Thorburn said. "It's a fast game. It's tough to keep up. Even I'm sitting there, watching stuff, and I miss things -- and I'm sitting where I can see everything. So for them to get it right all the time is almost impossible. Maybe have an eye in the sky. Whether it's baseball, football, basketball, it's part of the game. There's calls that are going to be missed, we understand that."

Uniformly, players expressed their respect for officials and praised them for doing the best they can. Officials are typically not allowed to speak with the media, though it should be noted they have made great efforts over the past few years to keep up with the faster, more skilled NHL, including new fitness mandates.

"It's a hard job, especially when they don't have the video replays," St. Louis defenseman Joel Edmundson said. "So many moving bodies on the ice, they don't always see everything."

"Obviously the refs are the best at what they do in the world," Blues center Brayden Schenn said. "But they also have it tough."

Added Thorburn: "You almost wish there was an element of a safety net because we're hanging them out to dry."

Bruins defenseman Torey Krug also sympathized with the refs, saying: "As athletes, we make mistakes, that's why goals are scored in the first place. Officials make mistakes too."

Players don't get the luxury of do-overs. Officials -- in theory -- can.

"My only suggestion would be to be able to review anything that immediately affects a scoring play," Krug said. "So if, for example, a hand pass was part of the scoring play, as a secondary assist or a primary assist, that should be reviewable. If it's outside the primary scoring event, then I don't think that should be reviewed."

On if it would slow down the game too much, Krug said: "I don't think it matters. We play such a fast game, I think it's more important for the guys to get things right."

While the NHL has made conscious decisions to keep the length of games palatable, some NHL players interviewed said they wouldn't mind a few more breaks, for accuracy's sake.

"I think there could be more video replays," Edmundson said. "Not to slow down the game, but maybe just to go over to the penalty box and check it out for a minute. It's not that hard if you see it on video."

Though it's hard to exactly nail down in a rule, what mattered to players most was controversies that directly affect the outcome of the game.

"There's been some ideas tossed around, and it's not really up to me, but I think for a game-winning goal, like what happened to San Jose, that should be overturned," Schenn said. "You just want the game to be officiated right."

Added Bruins center David Krejci: "Maybe the league should look in to have some other plays reviewable. We got scored on in Columbus, where the puck hits the net. There's the play in Vegas-San Jose. Those things can change games, they can change series, like for Vegas. Those type of game-changing, series-changing moments, they should be reviewable. I don't think as refs they can make the call on the spot. I think the league should look into it -- I'm sure they will at some point."

BOSTON -- Imagine dedicating your life to a single objective for 10 years. You sweat for it and you suffer for it and you bleed for it. Then you walk away from it, taking care to set up your successors to continue that pursuit, because you consider that responsibility as part of your legacy. Finally, the conditions are right for them to achieve that dream ... and it turns out you're now the one trying to prevent its realization.

This is the scenario that David Backes, current Boston Bruins forward and former captain of their Stanley Cup Final opponents, the St. Louis Blues, has been wrestling with for the past week. The hero has played long enough to become the villain, in the eyes of his former team.

"The part of me that's regretful is that we didn't get to a Final or win a Cup in my time that I was there. That's a huge regret," Backes told ESPN on the eve of Game 1 in Boston. "They're the opponent now. I have to think of them as such. But I had about six days to wrap my head around that and to say that, 'It's us or them.' And that's really helped me."

It can't be overemphasized how much bringing the Stanley Cup to St. Louis for the first time in the franchise's history -- or, failing that, at least making the Final for the first time since 1970 -- meant to David Backes for most of his adult life. He bled blue: Drafted by St. Louis 62nd overall in 2003. Debuted with the Blues in 2006. Earned the team captaincy in 2011. Helped it grow from a basement dweller back to a perennial playoff contender.

The closest he came to achieving the dream was in his final season before signing with Boston as a free agent in 2016. The Blues won seven-game series in their first two rounds, then lost in six games to the San Jose Sharks in the Western Conference final.

"The buzz in town was extraordinary. If we had made that next step, I don't know what would have happened. We would have blown the roof off the arena," recalled Backes, 35.

Instead, it ended with him weeping in the St. Louis dressing room. It wasn't so much the loss as it was an anecdote he shared at the time about Steve Ott, who is now an assistant coach with the Blues.

"He'll kill me for telling you this story, but in Game 5 [against San Jose], I'm not feeling well. And Steve Ott brings me something to make me feel better, knowing that he's the guy coming out of the lineup if I can play," he said after Game 6 in 2016, his voice quivering. "That's the kind of guys we have in here. Just stories like that. Guys blocking shots. Sacrificing their bodies. The heart's in there. The ability's in there. It's just that we came up short."

There are 11 players from that 2016 conference finalist on this edition of the Blues. They didn't come up short this time, beating the Sharks in six games to advance to the Final.

The only thing standing in their way now are the Boston Bruins -- and David Backes.

"I remember the feelings I had. It was a little bit of sadness, a little bit of regret, because I thought that was a group that could have won a Cup," Backes said on Sunday. "I wish it was alternating years, so I could cheer for the Blues one year and they could win a Cup, and we could have our opportunity and they could cheer me on, and we could all have one to our names. But it's come to this: Them or us."

Among "them" is one of Backes' best friends and his protégé on the Blues, Alex Pietrangelo. Which has made this all the more awkward, for both of them.

"Oh, here we go," Pietrangelo said with a sarcastic eye roll.

About three questions into his scrum at Stanley Cup Final media day, someone brought up David Backes to the man who replaced him as captain. Pietrangelo had been answering some variation of this question -- about personal feelings being put aside, about the surreal nature of having to go through Backes to win the Stanley Cup -- since the end of Game 6 against San Jose. His answer hasn't wavered.

"We both have a job to do. And we both have the same goal at the end. We're going to go out there and do what we have to do," Pietrangelo said.

Backes was a few years into his career when Pietrangelo, 29, arrived as a full-time player in 2010. The two became fast friends, to the point that Backes was in Pietrangelo's wedding party in 2016. It was that weekend when Backes told Pietrangelo that he was leaving for Boston, and it felt as though one chapter of his life was beginning as another was ending.

Some weeks later, Pietrangelo discovered a note from Backes that he had tucked into the sunshade of Pietrangelo's car. It was a letter about being a captain, about being a Blue, about being an adult. They laughed about how long it look Pietrangelo to discover what Backes assumed would be a letter he would read that weekend. But Pietrangelo eventually found it, and he read it, and it meant everything.

"When I got there, we were dead last in the league with the first overall pick, not doing too well. In the last five years of my time there, we were potential Stanley Cup finalists each of the years. We ran into hot Chicago teams or L.A. teams that were winning Cups on a regular basis and didn't allow us to reach that goal," Backes said. "So, any advice I could give to him that would be able to continue that work that I believe I had some fingerprints on, I wanted [Pietrangelo] to continue that, no question."

Blue general manager Doug Armstrong believes this friendship benefited Pietrangelo as a captain.

"Oh, I would say that they have a great friendship. They're both great men off the ice, great family men; they shared a lot of the same values away from the rink. I think that as David came in, we made him captain when we got there, he grew into it. Thrusting Alex into it too was a team in transition," Armstrong said. "I thought Alex -- every day he's becoming more comfortable and better at what he's going through. Going through what he went through this year, having -- for the people that don't know, he had triplets in the summer and then got off to a bad start, there was a lot on his plate. But he was able to put it all in its proper perspective and lead us at the most important time of the year."

Evelyn, Oliver and Theodore were born to Pietrangelo and his wife, Jayne Cox, on July 21, 2018.

"I think everyone that's a parent will say it's the best thing that's ever happened. That's the case for me. I guess you gotta grow up pretty quick when you have kids, right?" Pietrangelo said.

For Backes and his wife, Kelly, it was a joyous moment too, having seen what their friends had experienced in trying to start a family, which Pietrangelo chronicled in an emotional essay for The Players' Tribune.

"That's another part of this game. The wives grow friendships. When they had some issues with pregnancies before [the triplets], my wife was supporting Jayne in different ways. Now, they've got three kids at once," Backes said. "The issues they had getting pregnant, staying pregnant, it's a big blessing all at once. Three amazing kids, and a great mom and dad to raise them."

As their husbands draw their battle lines in the Stanley Cup Final, the wives have remained in contact.

"They've exchanged texts seeing what's going on with each team and how things are being run. Outside of that, I don't want to know about it. They can make however many wagers or friendly bets they want to make," Backes said.

But when it comes to texts between the Blues and Backes, it's radio silence.

"Friends on the St. Louis Blues are now cut off, officially. If they text me, it's going to fall on deaf ears," Backes said. "If they get a text back, it might be from my daughter and it will be very incoherent."

Backes said he and Kelly "grew up" in St. Louis. They had their first daughters there. They started their Athletes For Animals foundation there and were a visible part of the community. Backes said that, like so many other former Blues players, he could see his family settling there after his playing days are over.

His emotional ties to the Blues and St. Louis remain intense, but not nearly as much as when he initially left as a free agent.

"I'm very fortunate that this didn't happen my first year out of there. I'm not going to lie: My first time back in St. Louis, I think I was numb from the emotions. Going around, seeing security guards I haven't seen all year or people in town. Man, I thought this is a place that really touched me in my life," Backes recalled.

"From age 22 to 32, there's a lot of growth as a person. I feel like I made a little impression on the city. But the city made a huge impression on us. Thankfully, it's not that first season back there. You kind of get those warm and fuzzy feelings out of your system. Not that they're gone, but they're just not experienced like the first time."

Pietrangelo agrees that enough time has passed so that this is all slightly less surreal.

"If you had asked me that before he signed his contract, maybe. But it's been a few years now. We've played a lot against each other in the last couple of years. We've both gotten our heads in a different spot," Pietrangelo said.

At the end of this series, Pietrangelo and Backes will shake hands. One of them will skate off to the dressing room for the last time this season. The other will remain on the ice to hoist the Stanley Cup for the first time in his career.

Win or lose, there will always be the lingering bit of regret for David Backes that he couldn't help the Blues achieve that dream when he was there.

"But the truth is that there's been 52 years of groups of guys that probably have that same regret," Backes said of St. Louis.

"It would have been a great city to win a Cup in. That said, I don't know if there's a bad city to win a Cup in."