Every hockey fan I know has ideas how to improve the game we love. I have my own.
Shrink the goalie gear
I’m a goalie. I’ve been a goalie since I started playing the game, in elementary school. And I’m here to tell you, the size of the gear today is absurd. It’s almost comical.
I grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, when “goalie protection” was an oxymoron. Comparing the felt padding of my chest-and-arm protector and pants to today’s high-tech foams is like a 1972 Volkswagen Beetle challenging a Ferrari to a race. There’s no comparison. Those space-age foams (and other materials) allow goalies to play the position with modern techniques, incorporating the entire body to make saves (remember Henrik Lundqvist using his helmet to deflect shots out of the rink?).
Now, I want keepers to be safe. But the fact remains that I was a better goalie in my 40s than I was in my late teens and early 20s, and most of that had to do with better technique and the quality (and size) of my gear. I no longer had to use my gloves to catch or deflect everything, sparing my torso. Instead, I could just let the puck hit me, without worrying about getting hurt. That allowed me to keep my arms to my side, making my 6-foot-3 frame seem larger. When that happens, the net shrinks. Shrink the gear, and the net gets bigger.
Goalie safety should be the only reason for larger gear. It doesn’t need to be as big as it is.
Abolish the trapezoid
Regardless of what that cantankerous old curmudgeon Brian Burke says, the trapezoid was one of the dumbest, and one of the phoniest, rules ever cooked up by the NHL “braintrust.” It’s proof that people who know hockey best aren’t the ones running the show. Seriously. You have a goalie develop a skill — stickhandling — and you take it away with some absurd “can’t play the puck” zone. What the rule really does it prevent the fans from enjoying the antics of lousy stickhandling goalies like Patrick Roy. Get rid of it.
Icing during PKs
I would have loved to been a fly on the wall when the game’s forefathers thought up this brilliant idea. “OK, when a team does something wrong, we take away one of their players for two minutes, or until they score. But we don’t want the other team to have too much of an advantage, so we’re going to let the penalized team ice the puck with impunity.”
Really, how goofy is that? Why make it any easier for the team that took the penalty? You’re literally giving them an advantage they don’t enjoy at any other point during the game (a rule that the team on the power play doesn’t enjoy, at the very same time). It makes no sense.
A penalized team should play by the same rules as the opposing team, but a man down. Simple. If you really want to make it interesting, and increase scoring, make teams play shorthanded the entire two minutes. That’ll give chippy players a really good reason to think twice before taking cheap penalties. Does it also penalize teams for bad calls? Yup. But that happens now anyway, and over the course of a season, it all balances out.
Play the puck
This will never happen, but it should. We need to change the definition of what constitutes a legal body check. The game is predicated on violence, not skill. Consider this classic description of Canadian hockey from Guy Lawson’s superb 1998 piece “Hockey Nights” in Harper’s about the Flin Flon Bombers: “Razor’s team would forgo the flourishes of brilliance, the graceful swoop across the blue line, the geometrically improbably pass, the inspired end-to-end rush. They would play the man, not the puck. They would play what Razor called ‘ugly hockey.’ ”
Every year, we hear NHL owners and officials give lip-service to protecting players. And every year, we lose more star players to head shots. Two poster children for this situation are Boston Bruins Marc Savard and Patrice Bergeron. Savard never recovered from a dirty hit to the head delivered by Penguins cheap-shot artist Matt Cooke and suffered concussions symptoms well into his retirement. Bergeron got his gray matter scrambled by a careless hit against the boards from Philly’s Randy Jones. In both cases, there was absolutely no effort to play the puck.
That’s exactly what the current rules allow. It’s a recipe for disaster. And I love hitting in hockey. I don’t want to “sissify” the game, to use a derogatory term employed by a former NHL player, coach and TV “analyst.” But the primary goal of bodychecking always has been to separate the player from the puck. Why not make them actually play the puck? That will force them to keep their stick blades, and elbows, down. You can still drill someone, but you’d have to do it while they have the puck. What a concept, right?
Apparently, USA Hockey is moving in this direction, according to an acquaintance who has reffed Massachusetts hockey for decades. “Over the past couple of seasons, USA Hockey has made a big push to have players play or make a play for the puck before delivering a check,” said my friend. “They want that play, especially where the player times the arrival of the puck to an opponent and then hits him with no attempt to play the play the puck, removed from the game.”
You wouldn’t know that this “push” by USA Hockey is happening, judging from the hits being ignored at the collegiate or professional level. But I’m all for it.
Widen the rink
There is no question that today’s hockey players, especially at the higher levels, are faster and stronger than their predecessors. The game has become a track meet. One solution, if not the most practical, is to widen rinks at the college and professional ranks to Olympic dimensions. Granted, this requires a huge financial investment, which is why I’d ask only professional leagues and colleges to adopt bigger sheets. That’s where they’re really needed.
You could even grandfather older rinks — but every new arena would have to install an Olympic-size sheet. Some colleagues predict that the game will still gravitate to the front of the net, where most of the congestion now happens. But the more room you give skilled players, the more time they’ll have to make special plays.
Get rid of the blue line
This is another “dream” choice, because it’s far too radical for the cranky, crusty men who run hockey to really consider it (and, trust me, I’m no spring chicken myself). They’ll argue “tradition.” My response is “boring.”
For years, we’ve been told that the game needs more scoring. Assuming the goalie gear gets reduced to reasonable sizes, we don’t need to expand the size of the net. What we need is more quality scoring opportunities. And the best way to do that — especially if you don’t widen the rink (which puts all the existing rinks in an awful predicament) — is to open up the ice by removing the blue line.
Let’s face it … the blue line is a dinosaur, an outdated anachronism. When you really think about it, it’s as useful as the famous rule outlawing the “two-line pass” (God, what a nightmare that was). Does basketball need a blue line? Or lacrosse? Nope and nope. If a coach wants to have a player hang out in the offensive zone, let him. That’ll force the opposing team to cover him. When that happens, the ice will open up. And scoring will increase. I’d bet my house on it.
Get rid of offsides review
If you’re not going to get rid of the blue line, at least get rid of the offsides video review. This is the simplest and easiest change on the list. The offsides review is, in a word, idiotic. Dozens and dozens of big games — most memorably the recent Hockey East semifinal game between UMass-Lowell and Boston College — have been decided by this flawed process. This is where all the “get the call right” proponents come crawling out of the woodwork, but their logic is not only arrogant, it’s self-serving. Because making micro decisions at the blue line doesn’t reflect what the rule was intended for.
In the BC-Lowell game, with the score tied 5-5 in the first overtime, the Eagles’ Patrick Giles deflected a shot into the net. Game over, right? But no. We had to rewind the tape. And the game-winner was overturned after a lengthy video review, when officials ruled BC’s Casey Carreau was offsides (15 seconds beforehand) by a fraction of an inch. In fact, Casey’s back skate wasn’t even past the blue line, it was just “above” the blue line (not actually on the ice). With the goal wiped off the board, the game continued, and Lowell won in the second OT.
This is a clear case of the “letter of the law” being at odds with the “spirit of the law.” The blue line, and the distinction of an offensive zone, is set up to prevent cherry picking, or whatever you want to call. Casey was literally side-by-side with his teammate as they entered the offensive zone. What advantage did that fraction of an inch possibly give the attacking BC team?
The answer is none. The spirit of the law is not violated. Not even remotely. Again, in a game where people complain about the lack of offense, to review a zone entry that may be offsides by millimeters is just absurd. This is a obvious case when officials should make the calls, and let the players play.
Longtime “Goalie Guru” columnist Brion O’Connor tackles general hockey topics each issue with “At the Buzzer.”
