[CHICAGO, IL] -- As you may have
heard, NHL general managers have returned from the Ritz-Carlton Golf
Resort in Naples, Fla., where they spent several joyous days sampling
h'ors duerves, drinking adult beverages and working on their putting
games.
Er, what I meant to say was, they spent several grueling hours in
ridiculously intense discussions about serious issues such as
fighting, three-point games and the like.
Not to wreck the economic stimulus plan or anything, but it would have
taken only one phone to find the answers.
To me, naturally.
After all these years, I still can't figure out why professional
hockey is exempt from unnecessary violence and bloodshed. Is the sport
more physical than football or even rugby for that matter? Nope. Yet
it is the only one that allows its participants to beat the heck out
each other, sit down for five minutes, then beat the heck out of each
other again.
The argument in favor of fighting is that hockey can't survive without
it. Tell me, Sluggo, why is NHL a distant fourth in the food chain of
professional team sports then? Where are those hundreds of thousands
of fight fans who can't get enough of the Donald Brashears and Daniel
Carcillos of the world? The Neanderthals who attend games for the beer
and blood aren't the kind of fans that the league should want to
attract, anyway. It's the real hockey nuts who like the game for the
skill and athleticism that they should want in their arenas.
So it's time for the NHL to phase out fighting once and for all. Make
the punishment so severe that the goonies have think twice about
staged brawls. Wanna fight? Fine. You're tossed out the game and
suspended for another without pay. For each fight after that, the
suspension doubles. If you fight five times, then you sit out 31 games
and donate 38 percent of your salary to the league office.
Really, if hockey has survived without Bobby Orr all these years, then
think it can get along without Colton Orr for awhile?
Of course, without the threat of physical retaliation, one theory
goes, there will be blatant stick infractions galore. Well, not if the
penalties are the same for them, too. Re-arrange a face with reckless
stickwork and you're ejected and suspended, too. Do it again, sit
twice as long.
Now that we've phased out fisticuffs and stickwork, hockey will become
a sissy sport, sort of like Ice Capades in shoulder pads, right? Wrong.
Actually, you'll see a more physical game in many respects. In order
to neutralize the skill guys, more attention will have to be paid to
the fundamentals again.
You watch. All of a sudden, you'll see things that you haven't seen in
years. Like the return of the hip check, for instance. Not only that,
but players will have to learn to take a clean blow and not retaliate
with a fist to the face. Like NBC analyst Pierre McGuire said the
other day, "If you lay a good hit on someone, you shouldn't be
expected to fight. That makes no sense at all."
Next we'll address the cockamanie points system, the worst idea since
Mike Milbury traded Zdeno Chara and Jason Spezza for Alexei Yashin.
Whoever thought of one point for an overtime loss should spend five
days in the penalty box. With the Hanson Brothers. What the system has
done is turn the third period into a snoozefest. Now teams are content
play rope-a-dope to steal a point before they floor it in overtime
again.
Think about it: Only in professional hockey can a team not win a
stinkin' game in the regular season, lose every one in a shootout and
still be in the playoff hunt with an 0-0-82 record!
Seriously, I expect Jacques Lemaire and the Wild to play for a tie in
the shootout any day now.
Worse yet, the system throws water on heated playoff scrambles.
Because of the glut of three-point games late in the season, when
bubble teams play even more conservatively in the third period, it's
far more difficult to make up ground in the race.
Let's revert back to the old system. The winner is rewarded with two
points. The loser gets what it deserves -- zippo. And each team
receives one point for a tie.
Wait -- because of the shootout, there are no tie games any more,
right? Well, there are now.
Lest we forget, the shootout wasn't intended for professional hockey.
It was meant for the lower levels, which required a simple, more
immediate way to settle tie games because of limited ice slots. Are
Major League Baseball teams required to play with only eight players
apiece in extra innings? Does the NFL require quarterbacks to compete
in a tire drill in the fifth quarter? So why does the NHL resort to
what amounts to a skills competition after five minutes of 4-against-4
in overtime?
The shootout also makes shambles of the record book. For instance,
take the career leader in victories among goaltenders. Recently,
Martin Brodeur passed Patrick Roy for the top spot, except that Roy
played in the era before shootouts. Based on their career win
percentages, Roy would have 83 additional victories if his ties had
been decided on breakaways, while Brodeur would have 69 such wins.
Take away the 27 shootout triumphs that Brodeur also has since the
2005-06 season -- he's the all-time leader in the category -- and Roy
is 41 ahead of him.
On average, a goal has been scored every 12-plus minutes this season.
So extend the overtime period from five to 10 minutes -- five players
on each side -- and instruct referees to call penalties in the same
manner as the first three periods. You know, like real hockey.
The additional five minutes will decide more overtime games. Not only
that, but because teams won't be able wimp their way to a cheap point,
far more games will be decided in regulation play. If a few games end
in a dead heat after 70 fast-paced, hotly contested minutes, I doubt
that many people will be disappointed, anyway.
How many real hockey fans would miss the shootout? Not many. It was
all the rage a few years ago, but I don't sense nearly the same buzz
now.
Have I told my you about my plan to fix Don Cherry's wardrobe . . ?
Based in
Chicago,
Paul
Ladewski is
a Columnist with TheFourthPeriod.com, covering the NHL.
