A co-worker of mine who is big on hockey mentioned in passing to me how there are no rules for the dimensions of an NHL hockey rink. He said that the Boston Gardens was smaller than others, which is why the team played the game the way they did: Viciously, for the most part, and low-scoring.
Of course, having seen what the folks at Fenway do to Yankee fans, I can see vicious play come with the geography. And the low-scoring part, well…
Anyway, is my co-worker right? Are the rules still vague or completely undefined?
SIDE QUESTION: As of now, the dimensions of the outfield fences in Major League Baseball are the only variable ones in sports to my knowledge, unless my co-worker is correct. Are there ANY other dimensions in sports which, like the distance from home to center, can legally vary from stadium to stadium?
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Additionally, in the football thread, in which you participated, we learned that the depth of CFL endzones can vary.
Also (I’m not sure if this counts or is even accurate) I remember hearing that football teams visiting Arrowhead Stadium have a hard time, in part, because the play clock clock is really far from the field, while most other stadiums have it on the wall behind the goalposts. It’s not exactly a field dimension, but it could have an effect on the game if your quaterback gets shaken up and then gets a delay of game because he can’t find the play clock.
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Yeah, I thought of that too. Particularly older venues (Boston falls into that category) might have been grandfathered in. However, your friend is still full of crap when he says, “…There are no rules for the dimensions of an NHL hockey rink,” because that is certainly not the case.
Perhaps a Bruins fan will chime in and let us know the straight poop about the the Boston Garden.
For a long time there wasn’t a standard dimension for stadiums in basketball, hockey, or baseball. Hockey rules used to only specify the distance from the blue line to the goal line; a smaller stadium would have less room at center ice.
Baseball stadiums could be any size needed (the Polo Grounds were 254 feet down the foul lines).
For baseball, minimums were set up by the time of the spate of stadium building in the early 60s. Hockey and basketball came later. And, of course, anything built before the specifications was allowed to be grandfathered in. But any new arenas need to be built to meet the current specs.
This is so for both cricket and Australian football (as well as golf :D).
Football grounds vary as to length, width and curvature of the “pockets” (how quickly the oval narrows at the ends). To a degree ground shape and size dictates tactics - Carlton’s home ground is narrow and they traditionally have fielded slow but skillful teams. Sydney’s ground is very short which de-emphasises the normally crucial centre-half-forward position.
Cricket grounds all seem to differ. The Melbourne ground is huge in comparison to those in the West Indies and England. The Sydney ground has short straight boundaries (those in front and behind you) whilst the Adelaide ground has very short square boundaries (those to the batsman’s sides).
One English ground (can’t remember which one) even has a large tree on the playing surface. IIRC it has been there for more than a century and the locals don’t think it at all odd. First class (ie the next level below international play) games are played there.
Satan, your friend was not full of crap. Yes, there is a standardized footprint for hockey rinks. The rink is of course 200’ x 85’ in the NHL. The rules even tell you how the corners are supposed to be shaped.
Lance Turbo is also corect when he says that older arenas were grandfathered into the league. Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium and The Aud in Buffalo were all clearly undersized. That is where the term home ice advantage really meant something. It seems that when a team moved from a “unique” arena into a modern one, they had losing records at home (I know that this is true of Boston and Chicago and Montreal, I’m not sure about Buffalo).
International (and Olympic) hockey are played on bigger rinks, with dimensions of 200’ x 100’. There are many fans of the NHL who think that the bigger rink needs to be adopted in North America. They are probably right. Players have steadily gotten bigger and injuries have increased without more room for them to move in. In particular concussions have gotten to be a major problem (ie Eric Lindros). The odds of NHL rinks being made any bigger are limited for the forseeable future. Hockey more so than other sports depends on revenue from ticket sales so owners aren’t going to jump all over any rules that would force them to take seats out of their arenas.
It was. The rink at the original Boston Garden, which is no longer in use (I think the building has been demolished), was 191 feet by 83 feet.
Many of the Original Six rinks were old enough to have been built before the rules stated how big a rink should be. Thus you find that while Madison Square Garden, Maple Leaf Gardens and the Montreal Forum were each 200 by 85, Chicago Stadium was 188 by 85 and the Detroit Olympia was 200 by 83.
Even some of the expansion teams played on an odd-sized rink in their early days: the Buffalo Sabres played on a rink measuring 196 by 85 at the Memorial Auditorium, and the Pittsburgh Penguins played on the Pittsburgh Civic Arena’s 205 by 85 rink.
(BTW, the source for this info is a 1970 hockey card collector’s album I’ve owned since I was a child.)
Now that none of the Original Six rinks are being used, their teams playing in newer facilities, I would think that the NHL would ensure that the rinks that have been recently built would have to be the same size.
The ice at the old Boston Garden was smaller than the other rinks around the league, but the Bruins now play at Fleet Center, which is officially regulation.
One more note. Some of the other professional hockey leagues don’t have regulation rinks. We have the WPHL here, and their rink sizes tend to vary somewhat. Most of it’s because of limited space and money, though.
And yes, rink layout affected the way teams played. Some rinks, like Boston, had tighter corners that allowed for more rough and tumble play. Philly, I think, was like this, too. Larger rinks had more room for passing and made it harder to tie it up in the corners. It lead to faster and more precise teams.
Also, at times the Boston ice surface was so bad that there were spots where the underlying floor would come through. If you knew where those spots were you could take advantage by forcing your opponents to skate over them and fall. Definately a home rink advantage.
The Celtics basketball floor (which was layed over the ice) had some remarkable dead spots which the Celtics players used to their advatage as well.
I think the NHL has finally standardized the size of all of its rinks with the spate of new arenas that have been built. Isn’t the oldest one in use now the Igloo in Pittsburgh? I think it predates the current Madison Square Garden.
Of course, the quality of ice varies widely throughout the NHL. Places like Anaheim and Dallas are not known for having good ice. The Staples Center got mixed reviews for its ice in its first year.
As for the Original Six, I really hate that name because it is inaccurate, but that’s a topic for a different thread. One that was discussed last year.
