I don’t follow hockey much; basically I root for the Buffalo Sabres out of local loyalty, but that’s about it. I don’t really understand the finer rudiments of the game — I always get into it when the players are skating around and they have some good momentum going, but then they inexplicably stop completely, and the announcer says something like, “Oh, Grapinchuk crossed the blue line!” or “Grapinchuk is called for icing!” And I’m thinking, “Huh?” I even liked it when one of the TV networks had that little dot superimposed over the puck, with that laser-like special effect whenever the puck was passed or shot. It made the game easier to watch.
Anyway, hockey’s quite a topic on the local sports talk shows, because (a) Super Bowl hype won’t ramp up until next week (and, really, since everybody knows that StuPats are going to spank the Eagles, what’s the point?), and (b) hockey is Buffalo’s only sport when the Bills aren’t active. So I heard a proposal on one of the shows this morning, offered by some guy who called in. I didn’t catch the guy’s name, but his idea — a prescription for making the game of hockey itself more exciting — struck me as interesting, and I thought I’d summarize it here in case any of my hockey-knowledgable readers wanted to comment.
Basically, everyone on the radio agrees that NHL hockey has become so defense-oriented that the game is boring to watch. The fast pace is apparently gone. A popular idea for rectifying this is to increase the area of the ice, but that’s not really practical in most cases, since presumably few NHL arenas can accomodate a larger ice surface. What the radio caller proposed was this: if you can’t increase the size of the ice, get the same effect by reducing the number of players on the ice in the first place.
He proposed that the NHL switch to four-on-four hockey, with a concurrent reduction of roster sizes. Fewer players taking up the ice would, he argued, promote the kind of fast-paced, skating-centered game that the NHL used to be.
The obvious sticking point would be that the players’ union would not approve a plan that reduces the number of jobs available for players, but the caller had an answer for that, too: compensate for that by expanding the NHL to markets that have either been abandoned (Hartford, Quebec City) or new markets entirely.
Any hockey fans with thoughts on this? I have absolutely no idea one way or the other.
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