Personally I think the biggest rule change that wasn’t talked about much was the four extra feet available in the attacking zones. During the power play for Dallas last night, with a mobile defense and Zubov at the point it proved to be very valuable.
I didn’t know they had made it against the rules now for a player to clear the puck straight over the glass in their defensive zones. That only used to be an automatic if the goalie did it.
Well I called that goalies would be rushing to the edges to grab the puck so it would go behind the net into the ‘bad’ area. (not here, but to some friends) But I didn’t imagine seeing Turco (DAL-G), send a pass from the boards near his goal line aaaall the way to the opposite corner of the farthest blue line where a player was waiting for the pass. Talk about catching a team in a change! Wow!
I saw Jimmy Howard do the same thing in a preseason game. Players like Turco and Brodeur could rack up some serious points this season. It’s about the only advantage that puck playing goalies have left thanks to the trapezoid.
Brodeur did a lot of those long passes last night.
Woohoo, the 1-1 Rangers are undefeated!
How stupid is this scoring system? They have completely eliminated ties, and yet they still award “tied in regulation” points. Why? To prevent teams from playing nothing but defense to avoid the loss? If that’s such a good strategy, why don’t teams do it from the beginning of the game? (This is an actual question. Can anyone explain it to me?)
If they are going to use pity points, I say bring back the ties and ditch the shootout gimmick altogether. Without teeth, it’s a joke.
So the local Rangers station (MSG) is showing shorties similar to the NFL channel’s short cuts. One hour long, it gives you most of the game. As a guy still trying to get into hockey, (lo these many years – the Rangers are just painful to watch,) I must say I am digging the shorties.
I understand that a real fan wouldn’t watch that way, just as a real football fan would be aghast at the idea of skipping the actual game and just watching the short cut, but for me it’s ideal. If the Rangers play any meaningful games, I’ll tune in live. But until then, I’ll be watching as many games as possible in the shortie format.
But I gotta say, I’m digging the new game. It’s quite a bit more exciting than I ever remember a Rangers game being, that’s for sure.
Fucking Rangers suck ass. The “winning” goal we let up in overtime was amateur hour. But hey, despite being 1-1, we are still undefeated!
I absolutely agree with this. I didn’t like the point when they introduced it, because it made a joke of the claim that the purpose of overtime was to decide who wins and who loses. Instead, you had a winner but no loser, which is ridiculous. But they claimed it was to prevent teams from playing for the tie in overtime, so I guess it did serve a purpose. But now there can be no ties, so that point no longer serves any purpose, except to reward teams who play for the tie in regulation, which I would have thought is the opposite of what they want to happen.
I just realized something upon reading this sentence. The 17 million times I heard a SportsCenter anchor say “bonus hockey” in reference to highlights that showed overtime, they were busting on the concept of awarding a point for “tied in regulation.” Since overtime doesn’t serve to decide who wins and who loses, (there are no losers, and the game is now magically worth 3 points instead of 2), the only logical explanation for overtime in the first place is that it’s simply “bonus hockey”. That’s fucking funny.
I’ve always been against the bonus point mostly because it then turns OT into a five minute game for another whole point…or half as good as a win over a full 60 minute game.