NHL STILL (Yawn!) On Strike: Anybody Care?

The BBQ Pit
41

I’ve been trying to be a hockey fan for about 7 years now. It’s not helping that I’m following the Rangers.

But the goalie position irritates the hell out of me. The goalie is 80% of the team in the regular season, an 98% of the team in the playoffs. It’s annoying as hell. You could make an argument that Hockey could be renamed Goalie.

I say get rid of the goalie position altogether. The goal should be the size of a shoebox, about five feet above the ice along the boards. That would make it a much more interesting game.

The unfortunate innate problem with hockey is the same as that of soccer. Live play basically never stops, so there is no chance to regroup and build upon earned position. Thus it basically amounts to a consistent whitenoise of nothing appearing to happen. Except in those dozen scoring chances or so a game, but there is no way to really predict when they will occur.

In football, you get in the redzone, shit’s about to happen. In baseball, you get men on the corners, or bases loaded, and shit’s about to happen.

In hockey and poor man’s hockey? I mean, soccer? Bunch of guys running/skating around. Who’s on offense? Changes before you can finish your answer. Are they in good position? Yeah, they’re about to no, they just, yeah, again they nope, my mistake, they iced it. Annoying in the extreme.

Aside from virtuoso moves, which are breathtaking, the most interesting thing that happens is dumping the puck in the zone and then chasing it. Yippee.

And the scoring system in both is simply awful. There is no game in the history of both hockey and soccer that has ever demonstrated this undeniable staple of sports drama:

“Running out of time; we’re losing. Oh he makes the move, what a play, we win the game with no time left on the clock!!! The crowd erupts!”

Never has happened, and by definition cannot happen. It’s mathematically impossible. That’s such a glaring flaw as to boggle the mind. The old sports cliche of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat is a foreign concept to hockey and soccer. Makes them lesser sports before a single game is played, IMO. No such thing as a buzzer-beater on the ice.

Basically, I guess my real complaint is that hockey somehow manages to combine the worst aspects of all the major sports into a single sport. Then toss in sanctioned extra-curricular fighting to remove all sense of credibility, and you get widespread apathy from the masses during a season-long lockout.

42

What you are describing is basketball with sticks. :rolleyes:

I’ve seen a lot more overtime playoff games in the NHL than I’ve ever seen extra-inning or overtime games in any other sport. Now THAT’s nail-biting, seat-edge stuff.

But I can understand you not knowing what that’s like. Rangers fan, and all. :dubious:

43

You’re right; it really doesn’t help your understanding of hockey that you’re following the Rangers. :wink:
Accept if you will the differences between the highly structured play of football and baseball (e.g. the scripted switching between offense and defense) and the unstructured play of soccer and hockey (e.g. the on-the-fly switching between offense and defense) and understand that one is not intrinsically better than the other; it is a matter of preference of both the players and viewers. I hate football. I think it’s boring; two thirds of the broadcast is spent between plays with guys wandering around the field figuring out how they’re going to line up before they try to knock each other down. Doesn’t mean it’s a worse sport than hockey; it means I prefer the more continuous, unstructured play, because the good parts of football aren’t enough for me to want to bother waiting through the boring stuff.

And I don’t want to let this go by without a comment:

Of course you’ve never seen a hockey team snatch victory from the jaws of defeat before. You’ve been watching the Rangers for the past 7 years. Seriously, sudden death overtime is considered one of the most exciting concepts in all of sports, not just hockey. I’ve seen a team losing by two goals with a minute left, score the two they need to tie in 40 seconds, with an instant replay to make sure the puck actually crossed the line before the buzzer went, and then win it 30 seconds later in overtime. Exciting? You betcha. Snatching victory from jaws of defeat? You better believe it; there’s nothing else you can call it.

It just doesn’t sound like hockey’s your thing. That’s fine. Don’t sit there and call it a bad game just because it’s not your cup of tea.

44

In the NY area market you get the Devils, Rangers or the… uh… oh yeah the Islanders.

I don’t usually name a player to watch, but for instance, the defence in front of their own net, or maybe a two on one looking for the non-puck-carrying attacker. Everbody knows that the attacker’s going to head for the net, but what does the decoy do?

Also power plays are valuable to watch from either the advantaged or disadvantiaged perspective.

I want them to look for positioning mostly. Strangely, it’s a hard skill to impart to kids in a practice situation. It’s easier to learn it by watching.

The other skill you see rarely outside of the NHL is puck control behind the net in the other team’s end. Calgary was masterful at this last year.

And since this was moved to the pit: Ellis Dee You’re a doo-doo head.

45

Interesting.

As someone who only came to football and baseball late in life, and who grew up watching and playing soccer and rugby, one of the least appealing things about American football is that it’s less a sport, and more a game of strategy run by an old fat guy on the sideline.

Football has none of the spontaneity, none of the sheer speed and constant action that require players to make their own decisions, rather than standing around waiting for some guy to read a playsheet. Inherent in sports like hockey and soccer is the need for players to be able to evaluate the conditions of the game and shift strategies on the fly, rather than getting a breather every 30 seconds and waiting for instructions from one of half a dozen different sideline strategists.

Another thing that soccer and hockey lack—and which, in my opinion, makes them better games—is the opportunity to micromanage the game clock. The abundance of timeouts, the two-minute warning, the ability to stop the clock by deliberately running out of play, remove from football a lot of what makes sport interesting to me—the flow of the game, the fact that, as you say, “live play basically never stops.” About the only time football ever gets close to that sort of excitement is during a hurry-up, no-huddle offense that’s trying to score as quickly as possible. Or when neither side has any defense, like when the Colts play the Chiefs.

And what you see as the “undeniable staple of sports drama,” the ability to make a dramatic play to win the game in the last seconds, people in other parts of the world see as nothing more than Americans’ obsession with getting a result rather than appreciating the inherent excitement of the game. One of the running jokes about American sports in other countries is the fact that you’re obsessed with avoiding ties, and will institute the most ridiculous rules in order to do so. Like football’s overtime rule, where it’s possible for a team to lose in OT without ever even touching the ball or getting an opportunity to score.

And if you think there’s no such thing as a buzzer-beater on the ice, i suggest that you’ve never seen a game of hockey. The reason games like hockey and soccer don’t need multi-point scoring plays is that they are inherently lower scoring games than football, where you can score three points just by being good enough to get within 50 yards of the opponent’s goalpost. I can’t count how many soccer and hockey ga

I say all this as someone who has grown to love football, and who spends every Sunday afternoon biting his nails over the fate of th

46

See? He’s such a fan of the hurry-up offense that he couldn’t even make time to finish his thoughts. :wink:

47

Shit. Sorry. Here’s the whole post.

Interesting.

As someone who only came to football and baseball late in life, and who grew up watching and playing soccer and rugby, one of the least appealing things about American football is that it’s less a sport, and more a game of strategy run by an old fat guy on the sideline.

Football has none of the spontaneity, none of the sheer speed and constant action that require players to make their own decisions, rather than standing around waiting for some guy to read a playsheet. Inherent in sports like hockey and soccer is the need for players to be able to evaluate the conditions of the game and shift strategies on the fly, rather than getting a breather every 30 seconds and waiting for instructions from one of half a dozen different sideline strategists.

Another thing that soccer and hockey lack—and which, in my opinion, makes them better games—is the opportunity to micromanage the game clock. The abundance of timeouts, the two-minute warning, the ability to stop the clock by deliberately running out of play, remove from football a lot of what makes sport interesting to me—the flow of the game, the fact that, as you say, “live play basically never stops.” About the only time football ever gets close to that sort of excitement is during a hurry-up, no-huddle offense that’s trying to score as quickly as possible. Or when neither side has any defense, like when the Colts play the Chiefs.

And what you see as the “undeniable staple of sports drama,” the ability to make a dramatic play to win the game in the last seconds, people in other parts of the world see as nothing more than Americans’ obsession with getting a result rather than appreciating the inherent excitement of the game. One of the running jokes about American sports in other countries is the fact that you’re obsessed with avoiding ties, and will institute the most ridiculous rules in order to do so. Like football’s overtime rule, where it’s possible for a team to lose in OT without ever even touching the ball or getting an opportunity to score.

And if you think there’s no such thing as a buzzer-beater on the ice, i suggest that you’ve never seen a game of hockey. The reason games like hockey and soccer don’t need multi-point scoring plays is that they are inherently lower scoring games than football, where you can score three points just by being good enough to get within 50 yards of the opponent’s goalpost. I can’t count how many soccer and hockey games i’ve watched that were tied deep into the second half/third period, and that were won by a dramtic goal in the last minutes of play.

In football, there are some games (and i’ve heard plenty of commentators say this), where the winner of the game is essentially determined by who gets the ball last. The aforementioned Colts-Chiefs games have been like that recently, and they’re not the only ones. Sure, the high scoring makes for some excitement and some fun viewing, but it’s pretty lame when the victor is essentially determined by who happens to have the last possession.

I’m not a football hater. In fact, i say all this as someone who has grown to love football, and who spends every Sunday afternoon biting his nails over the fate of the Ravens. But one thing that irritates me about a lot of hardcore football fans is that they think that their game is objectively (rather than only subjectively) better than every other sport, and often fail to appreciate that the very things they love about football are considered drawbacks by others, and that the things they mock in games like hockey and soccer are actually considered by hundreds of millions of people worldwide to be the things that make those games so exciting.

Remember, folks, if this came down to a vote, football would be booted off the global island in pretty short order.

48

Please, I’ve curled; my only strategy was staying upright! There’s more than just strategy in hockey, there’s play making and altering as they play goes on, which is why I’ve always preferred it to basketball. (Even though they’re both fast-paced games.)
I am lucky, yes, in that there are at least 3 minor league teams within a couple hours of me (Flint, Plymouth, Grand Rapids off the top of my head). You can get a ticket, a hot dog, a pop, and a program for $11.00! And in all honesty they’re a heck of a lot more fun to watch than a bunch of lazy millionaires who loaf in the corners and keep an eye out for some jackass who dissed them in the press ten years ago so they can knock him on his ass at the other end of the ice from the play. The kids on the local OHL team bust their ass on every play, sure in their dream that the stands are filled with scouts. You don’t hear about them getting drunk and driving their cars into ditches, or getting caught w/ underage girls in their limos, or starting businesses and going bankrupt with other people’s money.
That said, CBC could show the games from Europe, with a week’s delay and no subtitles, and I would watch it. It’s the only time I really get to enjoy my ‘Woodchuck cider avec hockey’; only one hockey venue I’ve ever been to sells it!
That’d be Nayushveeyul.

49

There is one rule they implemented that I think has hurt hockey tremendously. The instigator rule is preventing stars from the protection that they need.
I hope the coding worked!

50

Not only am I bummed because there’s no hockey to watch, the downtown area of San Jose is bummed because every downtown restaurant and bar is losing all their home game hockey fan revenue. I’ve seen pubs displaying signs such as “Sharks Unhappy Hour, drinks half off” to lure in some customers. Winter evenings in downtown used to be considerably livened up by the pumped-up pods of hockey fans walking about before the games. Now it’s dismal and cheerless.

I miss hockey.

51

I miss NHL hockey for a purely financial reason. I work not too far from where they play, in a bar that usually gets a ton of post-Stars game business, and we’re feeling the loss. Club attendance is way down for us for this time of year.

52

I miss hockey.

Fox Sports Pittsburgh has been filling the void by showing Great Penguins Games, but all that reminds me of is how the clutching-and-grabbing, trapping game has ruined the NHL (well, that, and a true fan’s treat to be able to take in a game at Yost arena at the University of Michigan, an experience that I won’t soon forget!!)

But as much as I miss it, I’ll wait as long as it takes, lest we end up fixing the system as well as they did in baseball (we all know how well THAT worked!). The NHL just cannot survive with that, and any short-term fun would be cancelled by the disappearance of the NHL, which would trickle down throughout all the minor pro leagues.

Then, once they get a CBA, hopefully that asshole Gary Bettman will resign (a man I wouldn’t piss on if he was on fire, and a man worthy of some of the most creative profanity-laden insults the Pit can offer) get in a hockey man as commissioner (my brother would love Don Cherry as the next boss, and I think that would work really well!), get rid of the 2-line pass and make some other sensible changes (ex: get rid of Michelin Men goalies!), and I think hockey will return better than ever.

53

I’m assuming that you work in the West-End. Where abouts?

54

Agreed on nearly every point. I look at the hot young goalies like Luongo and Guigere and all I see is a sumo wrestler squatting in the net letting pucks hit him in his hugely padded chest. Goalies like Hasek and Broduer seem to take up less space in the net and rely more on skill. Even Roy, who took up a good portion of the net, had lightning fast pads and a scary glove. The dude just knew where that puck was going. Most of the newcomers just don’t have that, and rely on bulk to make up the rest.

As for the two line, damn straight. Let’s open this game up. I don’t think it will result in more goals, but that’s not important anyways. Hockey should never be basketball on ice. It’s the chances that matter - the breakaways and odd man rushes - that get you out of your seat.

The instigator rule needs to go as well. Fighting is a part of hockey. Knowing that somebody will pay you back will keep the hooks and slashes down to a minimum.

And of course, some teams just need to go. Original six teams will get a year or two to shape up (Rangers, Blackhawks, I’m looking at you) before being contracted. Teams like Nashville, Atlanta, and the Florida Panthers need to be lost to the ages.

Having said that, I volunteer the Red Wings to make the sacrifice and take Heatley and Kovalchuk. It’s tough, but we’ll get by…if the season ever starts. :smiley:

Let’s hope the talks at least keep up, if they don’t succeed.

55

The reason hooks and slashes are up has nothing to do with the instigator rule. Nobody ever started a fight over a routine hook.

The reason hooks and slashes are up is that the penalties aren’t called anymore. It’s hard for people to believe this, I know, but twenty years ago in the NHL you were not allowed to hook someone. Ever. If you reached out with your stick and hooked a guy, you were given a penalty, almost every single time. Now, hooking is allowed; a penalty is called only if you physically haul the player to the ice, and ever then sometimes not.

The effect of this is to negate the advantage of speed. In 1984, if a forward for two steps past a defender, the defenceman was beaten; that play was over. Unless the defenceman was amazingly fast, the forward was gone to the net; there was no way to stop him from behind without hooking him, but you couldn’t do that because you’d get a penalty. Consequently it was to the advantage of teams with fast players to play a wide open game that gave them opportunities to get past defencemen for breakaways and odd-man rushes.

Now, since the hooking rule has been essentially discarded, beating the defenceman by one to three steps is of no value. You’re just going to get hooked off the puck.

Look, there is no problem with a LACK of fighting. The instigator penalty is almost never assesssed anyway. There’s far too MUCH fighting; fighting is no more a necessary part of hockey than it is part of football, which is just as violent a sport and just as dependent on star players. You don’t need fighting in football to protect Peyton Manning from cheap shots, because rules against cheap shots are scrupulously enforced, which has conditioned football players not to constantly try cheap shots. Hockey needs the rules against unnecessary and dangerous acts to be beefed up, and needs the rules to be changed - substantially - to allow players more freedom of movement. Here’s my list of Ten Things The NHL Should Do, not counting making the rinks bigger, which would help but I realize is not really possible:

  1. CSA-approved face masks should be mandatory equipment. There is no good reason for NHL players to suffer debilitating eye and face injuries. Properly approved face shields will essentially reduce such incidents to zero, just as they have in college and minor hockey. The current prejudice against proper safety equipment is pointless, ignorant, and stupid, and refuted by even the most cursory examination of the ACTUAL RESULTS of introducing such equipment at other levels. Every eye and face injury is completely unnecessary and easily avoided.

  2. High sticking should be an automatic and non-intential penalty. If your stick comes into contact with another player’s head while that player is on his feet and in a normal stance, you should recieve an automatic minor penalty. Deliberate high sticking: ten-minute game misconduct. Cross-checking should always be a major penalty. But as for high sticking, even if the contact was incidental and completely unintentional; even if you just brushed his helmet as you were turning around. Two minutes. No exceptions. Watch the sticks come down.

  3. The rules against hooking and holding should be enforced they way they were prior to the early 90s. All hooking and holding is an automatic penalty.

  4. Goalie equipment should be reduced in diameter to the rulebook widths, and until there is universal compliance, all goalies’ equipment should be measured with a tape measure prior to every game. Failure to meet standard is an ejection from the game and a $50,000 fine to the team for failing to properly equip its players.

  5. All fighting is a ten minute game misconduct.

  6. No-touch icing.

  7. Eliminate the center red line (and two-line pass rules.)

  8. Regular season games ending in a tie should have a 20-minute overtime period, not a 5-minute. Christ, reduce the ties already.

  9. The practice of “smothering” a player who has already gone down should be clearly defined as holding and assessed a two minute penalty, no exceptions.

  10. Make the rinks bigger! Okay, I had to say it.

56

I miss it, partly because Im a sharks season ticket holder, partly because my swedish wife got me to appreciate hockey years ago, and partly because while I like the NFL the cost and hassle of going to a game is far greater; plus Im a Seattle fan, not a niners or raiders fan.

Im disappointed more for the american and some of the canadian players though; others (like the Swedes definately), get to go home and play there, albeit for less money. I know quite a few Swedes who dont mind the strike at all, they get to see Forsberg the God play in his own country. My concerns are also with some of the younger players who may have been just melding with a team, this is going to throw things out of whack. Nils Eckman is one who comes to mind; he had one hell of a year at SJ last year, my wife and I would both be very dissappointed if he didnt come back to SJ.

57

I agree with everything but 8, we don’t need meaningless games to be going on longer than they have to. In that vein, cut down on the season, make it 70 games. Get rid of the back-to-back games, give players a chance to get healthy.

58

I have to agree with abolishing the instigator rule, while it has been said (and forgive my non-quoting skills) that it’s the non-calling of penalties thats caused it by I have to disagree,partially. When there was no instigator rule teams had their own policeman, if you hooked, slashed, or did anything unsportsmanlike that wasn’t called (and even back in the 80’s some penalties weren’t called) then the policeman would pay you a visit and remind you of the rules with a thrashing. If you went after Gretzky you would get a visit from Semenko or McSorely, so the stars had more room to play. Now if you go after the stars and the policeman comes in to defend said star then he gets instigator penalty along with other infractions. Do you really think Gretz coulda put up those numbers if all anybody had to fear was Gretz retaliating?C’mon give me a break. Gretz could barely break wind much less hit someone. So now the players have to rely on the refs to keep the flow of the game and the goons fight each other (kinda stupid if you ask me) and should the goon go after said offender then the offender doesn’t drop gloves and goon gets 5 mins in sin bin, or he can try to fight back and goon still gets extra 2 min for instigating.
In short, lose the instigator rule, make goalies fair game outside their crease, go back to tag up offsides and with teams policing themselves the cheap shots will reduce dramtically.

As for the finances, both parties are at fault but put yourself in the shoes of an owner. Your main revenue is ticket sales so you need a good team to get folks in, but when a good player starts to demand money you can:

A) refuse to pay him what he wants and he goes to another team, your fans get upset with you and show it by buying less tickets., reducing your revenue and ability to pay other players. The expos tried to be fiscally sound, see where that got them. People identify with stars and the stars know it, owners have to pay what they demand, no choice. They can refuse to pay and save the bottom line and have a healthy bottom line for their remaining few years of existance before they have to sell or relocate.

B) Pay what the player demands driving up salaries for other teams and then cause a vicious circle of escalating salaries.

Why they had to start making salaries public I’ll never know (prob a union idea)

There has to be a salary cap or the game is doomed and 50-55% of revenues is nothing to sneeze at. If the league does well so do the players. But with the players refusing that maybe they know that the league only has few years left in it. Contraction would be great as well, get rid of 6-8 teams and the talent pool just got deeper. What does it tell you when teams are so desperate that they get Alex Daigle and Stefan Richer out of retirement to play for them.

Bring on the replacement players and break the union, excuse me, association.

59

Rickjay, I was going to quote your post, but I just woke up and my brain is to feeble for coding right now :slight_smile:

I disagree with there being too much fighting in hockey. It’s a part of the game and has been for quite some time. Comparing it to any other sport is wrong. Football has never had fighting as a part of the game. Lots of other felonies sure, but not fighting. :stuck_out_tongue:

The instigator rule isn’t called as much because fights are practically planned with both sides agreeing to throw the gloves. If one party won’t agree, they either skate away or the instigator gets called.

You’re right about nearly everything else though. They need to call the penalties consistently through the entire season, not just for the first two months and not just against the teams that are high in the standings. The only reason Nashville made it as far as they did last year was by hooking and holding every team they played.

I disagree on the 20 minute overtime. Keep it 5 minutes and throw in a shoot out at the end. An extra period worth of overtime is way too much and people will start tuning out.

You’re dead on about the smothering. Nothing more frustrating than watching some third pair defender squat on a first line forward or pin him against the boards until the puck gets sent out. Stuff like that makes me yell unkind words at my television.

60

RickJay, excellent post!

I agree with everything except 7 and 8.

If speed is allowed back into the game, the red line and two-line offside return to serving their original, useful purpose. And I have no idea why a tie game cannot be accepted as a perfectly valid result.