January 5, 2005

JUNIOR TOURNAMENT PROVES HOCKEY CAN BE AN EXCITING GAME

       This lengthy NHL lockout may produce some financial stability within the league, but it will not solve one of the more pressing concerns facing the game—it’s boring.  Watching the junior final the other night I was impressed at the speed and the flow of the game.  It’s rare these days (even rarer during the lockout) to watch a hockey game where speed and skill are the deciding factors.  It was an incredibly entertaining contest as the large international ice allowed the players the freedom to be creative—to use their speed and their skill—unlike the NHL game which features a bunch of plodding monoliths clogging up the very small ice surface.  I would rather watch the two or three international tournaments that are played each year than any NHL game—including the playoffs. 

      That may make me a bad Canadian—though I can’t imagine how having an opinion can brand me unpatriotic—but the NHL game has slowed down to a crawl in the past couple of decades.  These brief moments of exciting hockey played on the large ice surfaces always brings me back to the way the game was once played on this continent.  To a time when speed and skill were still the dominating forces in the game—when power forwards weren’t classified as being the most important quality possessed by any team.  Scoring is not only down—it’s extinct.   Where Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux once amassed 200 points in a season, now the league’s leading scorer can’t even get halfway to that mark.  It’s not just the lack of scoring—it’s the lack of scoring chances.  It’s the seemingly endless amount of time watching players cycle the puck in the corners or behind the net, or playing the hook and hold game in the neutral zone.

       Anyone familiar with this column understands how I feel about the game.  I grew up on hockey, loved every minute of it and knew the rosters of each and every NHL team,.  Now I merely glance at the hockey page in the newspaper or listen to the sports updates on the radio to keep abreast of any hockey activity.  It even took me a few games to get interested in the junior tournament—such is my disinterest in the sport.  Fortunately I did manage to catch most of the second period of the final game when Canada showed the hockey world that it still produces skilled players.  The only problem is that once these skilled players reach the NHL they will be asked to do the things that bring the game down—hook, hold, and cycle. 

       So, what can be done?  It’s not like the NHL arenas can be lengthened, or widened, to accommodate the space needed for the international style of play.  Can the rules be enacted to limit the hooking and the holding? The NHL has tried it, but for only a short span of time, and it always returns to its original style of officiating when teams begin to complain about the number of penalties called.  The elimination of the red line is an idea, but one that will not change the style of play on its own.  Another idea is for teams to go four on four for the entire game—but that’s seems too radical for a traditional business like the NHL.  Perhaps, officials can make calls the way the NBA used to regarding zone defenses—dole out penalties to teams that utilize the neutral zone trap.  Unfortunately that idea puts the onus on the official to make a call, and since they are hesitant to make calls on infractions that are already in the rule book—hooking and holding—it’s doubtful whether they would make those calls.

       In short, while the NHL will hopefully have some semblance of economic sanity when it returns to action the chances are that the game itself will not change.  Fans of free flowing hockey with speed and skill as its strong suit—like myself—will once again be disappointed.  And once again we will ignore the NHL simply because the game will be—BORING.