My son and I went to a Salmon Kings hockey game last night. OK, it’s only ECHL, and not the NHL, but the calibre of play was still pretty good, I thought.
Plus, you can get great seats for only $16 or so. We were 5 rows up, just off the blue line, and had a great view of the following play. It was featured on TSN.
Worth the price of admission I tell ya. Although we did have a yahoo behind us who was disappointed that there were no fights. That’s apparently all he came for. That, and to yell F this and F’ing that every other sentence. We all felt sorry for his kids. 5-5 tie game, overtime and a shootout that the home team wins, amazing goals, and all he said was “This sucks cause there are no F’ing fights”
Actually, that’s probably what this guy thought, but he was wrong. The ECHL is a development league, with many players under contract to either NHL teams or NHL affiliates. Certainly not every player in the ECHL will move on, but in fact,
There has been a real drop in the number of fights over the past few years. The NHL does not require the services of fighters as much with the salary cap and all. This has led to fewer “goons” or specialist fighters in the development leagues. Not to say that fights don’t occur - they do - but the are much less frequent.
Yeah, if I’m a coach I show that to my players and say “Don’t let this happen to you”.
One defensive player made a half-assed attempt at a cross check and then he and everyone else was trying to play the puck. Nobody attempted to play the body and it cost them.
However, that was some great stick handling, and a couple of very nice passes as well.
I know ECHL guys can be linked to NHL teams but it’s still not a league where the top prospects go - the top guys are in the AHL.
I also wonder how many of the 492 guys only played a short time in the NHL vs. having a decent career? There are many guys who only last 10 or 20 games , even 1st round picks.
Ya, Bijou Drains was explaining why the guy behind me was possibly expecting more fights - since the ECHL is not where the top NHL prospects are typically found.
There seems to be fewer fights in general these days in most leagues.
Ah, now I get it. It was a really pretty goal. It must have been mind-boggling live since hockey plays are usually so bang-bang. The defense was poor but it can be tough in the heat of action.
To be honest, you won’t see many non-fighting skaters make it to the NHL (and even of that list, how many really stuck for more than a cup of coffee?).
But goalies will regularly make it out of the ECHL and stay up in the NHL. If an NHL team has 2 prospects in net, ideally you’d like them to be playing as much as possible. So, it’s better to send one to the ECHL to play 60-ish games than to have to split your prospects’ AHL workload down the middle or have one play as a backup only 20 times a year.
