The Obvious Solution To Low-Scoring Hockey Games

As I've detailed (and lamented) before on the hallowed pages of this blog, many hockey columnists and NHL officials are convinced that goal-scoring is far too low and an increase in said goal-scoring would play a major role in attracting American fans to the league. More goals = more eyeballs, the theory goes.

With that premise firmly rooted in their minds, these columnists and officials see no better option than to simply increase the size of the nets, thus, theoretically, making it easier for shooters to get past the swollen goalies and score more goals. Which is a good thing, they say. The end-all, be-all of good things.

It's not a surprise that a league run by Gary Bettman, a former NBA executive, would favor such a scheme. In the NBA, goal-scoring is completely out of control. A typical final score for an NBA game is 129-109. Obviously, in professional basketball there are no goalies (goaltending is a foul play) and strong defense (and even the tiniest physical contact) is highly discouraged and/or penalized.

If Bettman really wants the NHL to mimic the NBA, there's really only one solution: ban goaltending. That's right, I said it. Quit screwing with the rules of the game, the lines on the ice and the size of the goals. Just ban goalies. No more Roberto Luongo, no more Martin Brodeur, no more Marty Turco. All teams would have to do is skate past the blue line, lob the puck at the net and hope no defensemen are in the way. Simple enough. We'd easily see final scores like 36-30 and 41-38, and the red light would constantly be flashing---which is a fail-safe recipe for league success, right?

Isn't that what everybody really wants?

As Greg at the Fanhouse pointed out, Martin Brodeur has quit the NHL Competition Committee out of frustration that nobody is listening to his concerns. The league should take this as an obvious sign that goalies are troublemakers and just do away with them altogether. We wouldn't have to worry about adding asterisks to the stats of any future goalies in a bigger-goal era---there wouldn't be any more goalie stats!

Dear Lord Stanley hereby officially endorses the banning of all goaltenders from the NHL, effective this coming season. There is no better way to ensure more goals scored, which is obviously an idea bigger than Jesus right now. Do it for Baby Jesus.

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Veteran Goalie Thinks Modern Netminders Are Fat, Bitchy

The official Dear Lord Stanley position on goaltending and the size of the nets is this: the dimensions of the goal should never change---the dimensions of the goalies should. I'm not alone in this, much to my surprise. In fact, I've even got actual NHL goalies (well, at least one) to back me up in a fight.

Phil Myre, a 14-year NHL vet and the current goalie coach of the Florida Panthers, thinks the idea of bigger nets is just a ploy by the NHL to scare the goalies back in line on equipment dimensions, not to mention a lousy strike against record-keeping:

"I think there's still some options to exhaust other than the drastic measure of making the nets bigger," said ... Myre ... "I think that should be the last straw to reintroducing offence, because not only is it going to be tough on goalies, it's going to destroy all previous stats.

"The net should be the last resort, because it changes the whole game. From the time that they make the nets bigger, they are going to have to have asterisks beside the stats."

He also thinks the netminders are fat and need a serious diet.

What could the goalies do with less of? Gloves and huge chest protectors, says Myre. He points out that police officers can stop bullets with super-thin kevlar vests but goalies cling to enormous padded fat suits to stop thick rubber pucks. If official DLS patron saint Ken Dryden could be the best goalie in the NHL during the 1970s looking like this (barely bigger than the other players on the ice), why does Martin Brodeur get to look like Santa Claus with a mask on?

Make the goalies smaller, don't make the nets bigger. There's no argument as far as I'm concerned. If you don't agree, I'll set my boy Phil Myre on your ass.

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Crybaby Watch™: Cox Wishes They Were Bigger

Not exactly sure how I missed this a couple of days ago, but Damien Cox on ESPN.com has cast his vote for the the same silly gimmick oft-proposed by otherwise-heroic colleague John Buccigross.

The premise: goal scoring is down. The subtext: the more goals scored the better.

Cox blames defense first, which of course has become absolutely stifling in the past few seasons. He also cites the obvious:

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, all goaltending equipment was being revolutionized by new materials and ideas. While the size of goal pads had always been regulated, most of the rest of goaltending gear hadn't. Quite naturally, that motivated many to go bigger. And bigger.

The result was that, by the late 1990s, the available shooting area had shrunk drastically from the 1960s to the modern era.

So, the two reasons goal scoring is down are 1) defensive dominance and 2) bloated goalies. Obviously, the only solution is to make the goals bigger!

I'm no genius, but wouldn't it be easier just to tell the goalies "enough of the crap, you sissies" and draw up strict rules for their equipment sizing? It's not like that technology hasn't advanced by leaps and bounds in recent years. Thin is in. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the NHL would be much better if Martin Brodeur looked more like Ken Dryden.

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It Never Ends

Just two days ago I wrote an entry about the growing tendency of hockey columnists to complain endlessly about fairly insignificant annoyances in how NHL games are played. Don't like something that happened in one game? Change the rules for everyone!

Well, the soul-searching continues. It seems that goal-scoring has dropped considerably in the 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs, to an average of 4.9 goals per game compared to 5.9 in the regular season. Is this a sign that teams are tightening their defensive lines, shooting their goalies full of steroids or otherwise just upping their games? I mean, it IS the playoffs.

NO! It's a sign that the NHL is broken again and will probably need another sweeping rule change. Duh!

Damien Cox is the latest whiny baby to lament the apparently sorry state of pro hockey. Teams just aren't scoring enough goals for him, and he can't foresee many solutions, just a bunch of reasons to complain. Players are faster, he says, so defense is more efficient. The refs aren't calling all the penalties they should, he says, so pucks are easier to clear. Everybody and their mom blocks shots nowadays, he says, when almost nobody used to. The goalie pads are still too big, he says, and the goalies have an annoying habit of staying fit and athletic. Bastards. And finally, the coaches all learned their craft in the 1990s, when the puck was dead and the scoring was non-existent, he says.

He's not entirely wrong, but really, who cares? If the game is still exciting to watch (and it is, with the exception of anything involving Vancouver), then what difference does it make if the teams score 4.9 goals a game or 7.9?

I do agree that the officials have been lax on calling some penalties. You want to open the ice for offense? Start calling too-early and too-late hits as roughing penalties. If the player being hit does not have the puck, and didn't have it when the hitter started in his direction, call a roughing penalty. Those late hits will end pretty quickly. Do I support this idea? Not necessarily, but it's an option. That's not a rule change, it's a tightening of existing rules, which is always better than some kind of revolving-door rule change orgy which everyone seems to support these days.

Next thing you know the goaliphiles will try to ban the offsides call and make the goal eight feet by twenty-four. When does it end?

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Changing The Rules

There's a saying in most temperate climate cities that "if you don't like the weather, wait until tomorrow, it will be different." Something similar could be said about the NHL. Don't like some minor issue in one game, wait until tomorrow, the NHL will change the rules. Or at least the NHL most columnists seem to want.

Not a week passes without another high-profile hockey writer calling for sweeping changes to how the game is played, usually in response to some minor, insignificant annoyance they perceive to have occurred. Maybe a playoff game goes on too long one night, so somebody calls to end overtime. Or maybe a game ends with a very low score, so somebody calls to widen the goals. Or maybe some douchebag goon gets knocked out in a fight, so somebody calls to ban fighting. Or, just today, a goal was dis-allowed because a player kicked the puck, so somebody calls to allow kicking pucks into the goal. You name it, if any aspect of the game of hockey has been just a tiny bit annoying in one game somewhere, some columnist has joined the fight to change it.

Usually they mean well. The most common explanation is that the insignificant annoyance they seek to change is hurting TV ratings or is driving fans away from arenas. Or maybe it's keeping hockey from catching on among "casual" sports fans. You know, the moron in your office that never watches football but wore a Colts jersey to work the day after the Super Bowl. Yeah, we desperately need that guy on our side. But he doesn't watch hockey because he heard that a game went to double overtime once and he just couldn't imagine sitting still long enough to find out who won.

Does any other sport suffer from such constant introspection and demand for upheaval? Do baseball fans constantly call for a home run derby instead of extra innings? Do football fans demand that a field goal be worth five points instead of three? Do basketball fans insist that the baskets be raised to eleven feet because it's way too easy to score? If not, why not?

Maybe my memory is weak but I don't remember this attitude among hockey columnists prior to the lockout in 2004-05. The shootout during the regular season was batted around for a long time, and while I don't care either way, I understand the argument that it has improved the fans' experience. Other than that, I just can't recall anything like what we now have to endure.

Hockey is not basketball. The final score will never be 110-98. Come to think of it, who takes the NBA seriously anymore? Hockey is also not football. It is not a game so dumbed down and accessible that literally any knuckle-dragger can walk in the room and understand exactly what is going on. Hockey is not baseball, either. It's not a relaxing, recreational escape for people bored in the hot summer months. There is no reason hockey has to be anything like any of these sports.

There are lots of hockey fans already, and many more just waiting to discover the sport for how great it is. The rules don't need to be changed, the sport needs to be promoted. And constant introspection and hand-wringing among those who should be the NHL's greatest champions only makes the league look like a figurative politician, changing the message every day just to pander to more people.

Knock it off and enjoy the game for what it is. If you can't do that, why are you still here?

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