Ten Ways To Make X Better: Hockey
An irregular series in which I fix all of a sport's problems.
[Patrick Barron]
10. Get rid of the penalty for flipping the puck out when you're in the defensive zone. This is exactly icing and should be treated like icing. The only competition for worst rule in sports is what happens when a football player fumbles and the ball goes out of the endzone.
9. Non-shootout wins are three points. The NHL is the only league in any sport in the world in which some games are worth more than others. This is so very dumb. College hockey uses a model where you get three for actually winning a hockey game, two for winning a shootout, and one for losing it. It is not an offense to God and math.
8. Widen the blue line. The blue line is a lovely demilitarized zone that is both offensive zone and defensive zone, so you can touch it and not be offsides. The puck can touch it and not exit the zone. Both of these things are good. No offsides whistle in the history of hockey has improved the experience of a neutral fan. Widening the blue line reduces these whistles.
7. In fact let's get rid of offsides whistles (almost) entirely. Instead of stopping the game, you can just continue playing hockey. An offsides team can't score. Game continues. Once team ceases being offsides you can go score.
6. And add passive offsides. If you can't tell already, I hate offsides in hockey. It boggles that if one guy is offsides then everybody is. If you're on a rush and one guy is a hair over the line, he and only he is offsides. Let him tag up; let everyone else continue playing. If an offsides player does anything other than try to get onside, I guess you can blow the whistle, you game-stopping ninny. But if offsides guy is headed for the blue line, let him get there.
5. Gradually introduce Olympic ice. Olympic ice is a lot of fun, but currently impractical for buildings not set up with a 100-foot-wide sheet already. The NHL should force new buildings to be Olympic-sized, leading to a transitional period where some rinks are small and some are wide and there are all kinds of home/away effects, kind of like baseball. Also there will be an increasing number of big rinks on which standing a guy up at the blue line is super difficult and skill is more important. College hockey already has a number of Olympic sheets, and the transition is both jarring and fun.
4. Just embiggen the goals already. Goalies won. Whether it's equipment size or improved technique, the fundamental truth about hockey over the last 20 years is that goalies win and we give up and to restore the proper tension of a hockey game we're going to admit they win and tweak the size of the goal.
Most protests about this are luddite or ludicrous. One common protest is that expanding the goal invalidates records going forward. It does not, at least any more than the various equipment advances have done so. Ken Dryden versus any modern NHL goalie is QED here:
Dryden's pads are not only smaller but infested with mice and 10-20 pounds heavier. Also he doesn't know about the butterfly. Goalies win, expand the net by the width of the posts, all CLANG events now are goals, add 2-3 per game, it's a good time.
This is important. The current state of hockey is too close to baseball, which is dumbly random, because the goalies can cover up big differences in team quality.
3. A team doesn't clear the offensive zone until the puck gets over the red line. Michigan actually experimented with this in an exhibition a few years back. It was deeply weird but it rewarded teams who could actually get ahold of the puck in the defensive zone and increased the number of shifts where one team was scrambling around defensively and it felt like the team with the puck absolutely had to score.
2. Force teams to change goalies on the fly once a period. This would be awesome.
1. Teams have the option of putting a guy on the ice without skates. Offsides does not apply to him. Goals he scores count double. The thing that hockey has lacked for far too long is a broomball player. What does the world's best broomball player look like? I don't know. You don't know. We've waited far too long to find out.
Wow, bold moves. I can agree with some, but...
#6 Passive offsides - no, it's a team game for a reason
#3 I know you hate the blueline, but I can't get behind this one
#2 As a goalie, this just makes me sad
Hey I'm just going to take every point of this because it's Wednesday afternoon and how better to procrastinate than this?
10. I don't think flipping the puck out is exactly the same as icing because icing can sometimes be in doubt depending upon other players and can also be the result of a missed home-run pass. Flipping the puck out stops play, full stop.
But I also hate how frequently a gigantic power play is awarded to a team late in a game or even in overtime because refs have no choice but to call this penalty, even when it is obviously an attempted carom pass that just missed.
So I think treating this like icing is worth a try. If it breaks the game, change back.
9. I've hated the NHL's weird multi-point system since it was established, so I am on board with this. It entered the theatre of the absurd when the Blackhawks (I think it was them) went on that big "unbeaten" streak several years ago that the NHL was, as it often does, trying to push as some big deal that transcended many sports, even though they had left the ice with a loss a few times.
Honestly, as much as don't like calling shootouts full wins and as much as I'd rather avoid ties, I think we need to just plain go to wins and losses. You should not have to look at four columns when you look at the standings.
8. I think Brian has kicked the wider blue line idea around before; perhaps Alton has. I like it, it should be tried.
7. I'm not sure about this. On the one hand it would be nice to keep play moving if a team crosses into the zone offside; on the other hand touch-up offsides already exists and the net effect of this could end up allowing teams in the lead to play fast and loose with the line and stall for time, when the trailing team could really use that whistle.
6. Passive offsides would be impossible to enforce. Soccer is a slower game using far more space; it's a lot easier to address there. In hockey, it's much tougher to make the right call the moment the infraction occurs and would be even tougher if players aren't sure who is offside when the call is made. I think this would be unworkable, with or without the implementation of #7.
5. That ship has sailed. There was a lot of talk about the possibility of moving the NHL to Olympic Ice 15 years ago. The NCAA recommended it, and new facilities popped up with wider rinks. The 2002 Olympic Hockey competition, still the best hockey I've ever seen in my life, was entrancing.
But no move was made by the NHL and since then an entire crop of arenas has been built with the old ice size. The last couple of dinosaur arenas are being phased out. The new stadium bubble has burst. There simply aren't going to be many new arenas.
And so a team would be foolish to install an Olympic-sized sheet now, playing half of their games on the "comfortable" sheet but then shoehorning their offense and their defensive angles into smaller rinks the rest of the time. It is telling that recent NCAA rink builds have gone back to the NHL size--as long as major conference and NCAA tournament games continue to be played on NHL ice, there is no reason for a team to invest millions in a new arena and play on a different size.
It would have been a nice idea. It didn't happen; it probably never will.
4. I like this idea, but a friend of mine who played goalie in lower-level college hockey years ago and still plays adult league quite a bit thinks this isn't the way to go. He believes the pads should be smaller. I don't know that this could be done, but he wants the top of the leg pads lowered, because right now it is too easy to cover the five-hole and the bottom of the goal.
He might be right. He has, at least, actually played. I tend to think widening the goals will help, though.
(About invalidating records: watch film of the games played in the 80s when every record was set. The game was completely different. And goaltending was a big part of it--your average Gretzky highlight package will include a nice pass, a nice breakaway, and a goal shot from outside the faceoff circle that gets in that would get stopped 99 times out of 100 today but scored regularly then).
3. I feel like this would be too imbalanced. A couple of bad shifts could basically turn the tide of a game that would otherwise remain competitive.
2 & 1: Who among us hasn't set out to write a list of a certain length and run out of things to say before we ran out of numbers?
I like #9. The rest of it makes me glad that Brians not in charge.
Re: #4 - the thigh rises on pads have gotten so bad because goalies have gotten so big. I'm relatively short in net, so yeah shorter/skinnier pads sounds great to me, but it really doesn't make sense when you've got a Pekka Rinne type guy. Kind of like the limit on stick length in the NHL, but it just has to be extended for a guy the size of Zdeno Chara. So ultimately what I'm saying is, don't mess with a goalie's gear, but go ahead and increase the size of the cage he tends.
I freely admit that as a non-player I do not have the insight into this issue that others do.
#10 is the best way to make hockey better without changing much. A delay of game should be seen as delaying the game with something not found in normal play. For instance, intentionally dislodging the net to save a team from a goal. The puck going out of the rink should only ever be a delay of game if and only if the player intentionally takes the puck, skates up to the glass, and tosses it to a fan who had a cool cardboard cutout of them.
I like #9 but I'd prefer it to go back to 20min sudden death hockey. No shootouts! I honestly despise them. Make it 4v4, make it 3v3. That will be awesome. Lots of space to skate and no end of the game until the next goal. Shootouts suck! They reward individual skill over team play. If your team has all big burly bruisers and no finnesse datsyuk/stamkos/malkin deker, you basically should throw in the towel.
I also really like your idea for #8. I think that will reduce bad calls for offsides. I bet they're all ready at like a 99% success rate, but it's that 1% man, it kills a teams buzz when that whistle is called and disrupts the play.
TL;DR I hate shootouts, please remove them immediately.
I haven't seen stats, but has the 3 on 3 OT this year decreased shootouts dramatically? I would think it has. We all know that unlimited sudden death in the playoffs is the most exciting stuff in all of sports, but even a 20 min regular season OT just isn't practical. I think the 3 on 3 format with a shootout is a pretty good option (but the stats could prove me wrong).
So, can I just say that I'm excited for more posts like this one? Now that the GIF tourney is over, I need more #content and this fits the bill perfectly.
Damn.
I've got a big one that I think would help a lot -- eliminate the goalie playing the puck behind the net entirely. Like the offsides whistle, this is another feature of the game that has never made a game more interesting or more fun to watch. Make it so that the goaltender can't act as a third defenseman on dump-ins and it will open up the ice quite a bit. I love the idea of making the blue line thicker. Make it a few feet thick and make it so that you don't need your foot on the ice to be onside. You just have to break the plane.
I've got another one -- make goals scored the first tiebreaker in the standings. Defense has been so dominant for so long that organizations aren't building or emphasizing offenive talent like they used to. Bring offensive emphasis back to the game. Make offense a winning strategy again. Stop the trend of taking young, offensive-minded players and turning them into "responsible" forwards who score way less often. This has never been a more obvious problem to me than it has been watching the 2016 NHL playoffs. The decline of one-timer shots is particularly striking. Next time that you watch a playoff game, take note of how 95% of the players can't shoot a one-timer anymore. Just about all of them stop the puck before they take a shot, even with a perfect pass.
I disagree about flipping the puck out of play. Make clearing the puck along the boards up high a risky venture for the defense. That's a good rule. It specifically makes penalty killing harder.
I also disagree about making the rinks bigger. Watching international hockey, I can't see a positive effect of this. The 2014 Olympics are borderline unwatchable at times. The little changes that the NHL has made over the past 15-20 years to open up the ice have made fuckall of difference.
I am with you on expanding the nets. It's time. Add an inch on each side and an inch or two of height. The goaltender equipment has gotten wildly out of control and there doesn't seem to be any desire to regulate it. I can't figure out why, since I don't think that the bigger equipment is necessary for safety, but there you have it.
I think your first idea is worth a shot, though I do actually enjoy a goalie who can play the puck. There's also the adrenaline of a goalie firing the puck along the boards with an opponent in the neighborhood; goalie misplays do occasionally result in goals. But yeah, try it. The quadrilateral is pretty dumb anyway.
The second idea isn't going to change anything. Goal differential, a close cousin of scoring, has long been the key tie-breaker in European Soccer Leagues. It is nice to reward offense with something, but a tie-breaker is simply not enough of a reward to influence teams to alter what they believe is otherwise a winning strategy. A team whose roster makeup suggests that their best strategy is to force tight, low-scoring games is still going to do this and hope to avoid a tie.
And a tie really doesn't matter much when there are 16 playoff spots anyway. It is the difference in seeding, or the difference between missing the playoffs and getting swept in the first round. Nobody is going to add a forechecker for it.
I agree: offsides in these sports is the main reason I don't think I could get into these sports (other than being a huge Michigan, NFL, NBA, and MLB fan already). While I understand the need for the rule in both sports, that doesn't mean I enjoy watching it.
Well if the kid is the one racing to beat out the icing then yes, there is a chance of concussion. But I see your point. Still, safety of the crowd does not factor into that rule decision one bit from the NHL's perspective. If that's really a concern, they'll put up netting around the entire rink. They purely wanted to manufacture more scoring by creating more PP chances.
Given I played years of hockey as a goaltender (even played in the old OJHL) I have some insights.
10. Absolutely correct. Worst penalty in the game. Goalies used to fire the pucks over the glass all the time in my day.
9. Also correct. I find it ridiculous that a 4 on 4 or a shootout win is somehow is equivalent to winning after 60 minutes.
8. Incorrect. Widening the blue line is completely arbitrary. It will still be offsides if a player crosses the last bit of the blue-line before the puck (unless the player in question is handling the puck) so you could make the blueline 30 feet wide . . . there's still be tons of offsides. Also, it would make the ice surface look stupid. The only options are to change what constitutes offsides or eliminate it.
7. Incorrect. Here's an example. A team who is up a goal can just stand around offsides holding the puck and killing the clock in the offensive zone. They don't want to score, they're just screwing over the team that is behind by forechecking and being offsides to ensure they get the puck first in the corner. It would change, fundamentally, how the game is played and I am against that.
6. Incorrect. See number 7.
5. Correct. I have played on olympic sized ice, the game is faster and more open. I love this idea.
4. Incorrect, but not for reasons you'd think. First of all, I hate this. It is always brought up as a kneejerk reaction to a problem that doesn't exist. The size of the nets are a fundamental part of hockey. Scoring hasn't changed that much over the years and final scores of 7-5 simply because the goalies now have an impossible job would disgust me. It is hockey. It isn't supposed to be easy to score. And people that focus on pad size seem to forget that in the last 15 years or so, the average height for a goaltender in the NHL has gone from 5'9" to 6'2". Goalies are huge now (and pads are already size limited) . . . and there are still tons of 4-3 games. No one is having problems scoring so I don't know why everyone wants to turn hockey into something it isn't and was never meant to be . . . a high scoring affair. Changing the net size seems completely arbitrary to most diehard hockey fans. I mean, why not make the first down 5 yards instead of 10 because people pass more and it'll generate more scoring? Or let's make the rim in basketball 2x larger and only 9 feet so everyone can dunk without jumping and shoot 85% from three. . . . it is just as arbitrary and just as big of a change to the game.
3. On the fence. This is an interesting idea. I loved when they removed the red line from the "2 line pass" rules essentiall making 2 line passes obsolete.
2. Incorrect, though I think this is only semi-serious. . Teams would do it when they're forechecking and have posession, and it would have virtually no effect on the game whatsoever. The other team couldn't shoot the length of the ice because of icing. This seems to just be a "let's insert some slapstick comedy into hockey solely for the sake of fucking with the game."
1. I understand this is facetious at best but . . . incorrect. Two things I would change is bring back fighting to an extent and severe punishment for the jackass who sees his teammate get drilled because his head was down, then attacks the guy who drilled his teammate. Automatic game suspension for that punk for attacking a guy doing his job within the rules of the game.
The end.
It shouldn't be easy to score in hockey? Okay fine. It shouldn't be easy to stop 70 MPH pucks either, but nowadays goalies just do it by squaring themselves to the shooter and letting their big bodies and big pads stop the puck. It's horribly boring. Way too many games get decided by luck, random bounces, and who makes the fewest mistakes. Conservative hockey is awful to watch, and essentially every team in the league plays conservatively now, even the "offensive" teams. The defensively-oriented Montreal Canadiens team that won the 1986 Stanley Cup scored almost 100 more goals than this year's top scoring team, the Dallas Stars. The 4-3 games that you speak of are rare outliers, especially in the playoffs, and they shouldn't be. What would be wrong with having more of them?
If college basketball were like the NHL, then every single team would be the Bo Ryan Wisconsin Badgers. It sucks and the league has squandered God knows how many opportunities to create a following outside of its traditional areas. People need to stop romanticizing shitty, boring hockey.
I was stopping 70 mph shots in high school. And I was no way close enough to getting to NHL level. 75-85 mph slap shots in college, 85-95+ in NHL are averages. An NHL goalie better be able to easily stop 70 mph shots or he won't be in the NHL for long, regardless of whether they "square themselves to the shooter and letting their big bodies and big pads stop the puck." Which, by the way, has been a significant part of being a good goaltender and has been for, well, forever.
If it's horribly boring, then you probably aren't a fan, and that's ok. I think tennis is stupid. But I don't advocate for changing it to make it fit my tastes.
"Way too many games get decided by luck, random bounces, and who makes the fewest mistakes." Dude, have you heard of golf or baseball?
And all sports at that level are significantly based on who makes the fewest mistakes. Also, using any goal stat from the 80s to support your point makes you automatically lose the argument. The 80s were an anomaly. 6 of the top 10, and 8 of the top 15 goal scoring teams of all time were teams from the 80s. Maybe that's the problem. Many people on this board grew up and watched hockey then, so that's their reference.
Finally, "If college basketball were like the NHL" immediately invalidates whatever you say next because they are not supposed to be remotely similar. They are supposed to be vastly different. Just because "high scoring in basketball is awesome" has zero to do with anything about hockey.
Sounds like you aren't a fan of hockey. That's ok. Admit it and go with it instead of trying to change the game to fit your tastes.
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Seriously? If you don't like the sport than don't watch it. A player without skates? That is pure sucide. The bigger goals and the wider rink would solve a lot of problems. The rest of the list is a joke.
Because if he doesn't, the I've been spouting complete nonsense that I read on here...
I cringe everytime he talks about hockey.
Make OT 3 on 3. Also, get rid of shootouts. It is like ending a basketball game based on a free throw contest or ending a football game based on a field goal contest.
OT is 3 on 3, then shootout. And I think it works.
like basketball has done, to enhance the offensive side of the game and minimize the defensive "chipiness" which slows the game down. Also agree something needs to be done with either a wider goal or tighter restrictions on size of goalie equipment. Of course, going to 5 player teams (4 on 4 excluding the goalie) would be great, but impractical. Soccer = simple: add 2 more on field referees and enforce tighter calling of fouls, especially yellow card penalties for crying wolf.
I've long thought the blue line be huge and fat and go from near the center circle to near the circles in the zone. (Or have two blue lines.) You want to open up the ice, that's the single best way to do it. When the puck is in the neutral zone, the neutral zone is basically all the way to the circles and the offense can get a good rush on and if they have to dump the puck, it's easy to get; once it enters the zone, poof, the zone is huge and the defense has to extend way out and it's that much harder to clear.
Don't know how many of these micro changes I agree with, but the macro problem that hockey is dumbly random is completely on point.
Why is this a "problem?" It's part of the excitement. Many people would argue that it's an appealing part of the sport.
Periods can't end on a power play; a power play is essentially like extra time in soccer. It's stupid when a guy gets a penalty with 10 seconds left in the game and only has to serve 10 seconds an extra man down. It sucks when a power play is split in half for the team getting the power play. Make it so the period can't end on the power play, I think that would make the game better, personally.
The idea that I've seen tossed around that I like is if it's a 2 minute power play, makee it a 2 minute power play. If the team scores a goal 30 seconds into the power play, they have 90 more seconds to play a man up.
That's just dumb. They've already taken advantage of the power-play. Why continue to be rewarded for something you've already rewarded from?
If you make that rule, talk about changing how the game is played. There would never be anymore hitting, poke checking, using your stick for anything, boring hockey.
They already have a major penalty in place for severe penalties.
And I agree that splitting of penalties hurts the offensive team, but oh well. That's just the way it is.
waaaay overestimating its impact. The teams with the best power play are scoring on about 1 out of 4 power plays. Each year teams range from having a success rate from 15-25% on power play opportunities.
The full 2-minute power play (no release) was the original rule, until 1956. They changed it because Montreal would end up with a 3-0 lead 10 minutes into the first period after a power play a few too many times.
Really, they changed it for the sole purpose of decreasing scoring and thereby making the game more random.
#10 is the only one that makes sense. I still think it should be a delay of game penalty though.
And if you're looking for MOAR GOALS, look no further than the WCF between SJ and STL.
Bigger goals and smaller pads would result in games ending 20-15.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"Hey, we don't like hockey, so let's make it NOT hockey so that we'll like not-hockey but call it hockey."
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On second thought, that's too obvious. Let's instead go with The H.
this is deeply disturbing
I disagree with number 10. Anyone who watched hockey in the 70s and 80s will tell you flipping the puck over the glass when you were under pressure in your own zone was a real problem. I would like to see the refs have discretion here on calling it a penalty.
I disagree with number 10. Anyone who watched hockey in the 70s and 80s will tell you flipping the puck over the glass when you were under pressure in your own zone was a real problem. I would like to see the refs have discretion here on calling it a penalty.
Love the idea for olympic ice, and minor adjustment to the size of the net. I'm on the side of treating the Other than that, I'm good with hockey as it is. I wouldn't be offended by the thickness of the blue line increasing, but I wouldn't want to change anything else with offsides.
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