The idea Don never said anything of value or substance amuses the heck out of me because just recently he made just about the smartest most common sense suggestion I've heard in years: place the team benches on opposite sides of the rink. That does two things: First is to prevent incidents from happening. The second is so that one team is no longer given an advantageous position for 2 of 3 periods.
No team has an advantage over the other in the current alignment. In the second period
both benches are in the attacking half on the rink rather than the defensive half. The conditions are equivalent for both teams throughout the game.
Moving benches so they are centered, across the ice from each other, avoids conflict between players a the benches yes. It also eliminates the long change.
However, when teams change at the same time, it will create a problem defensively as the team with possession could quickly move up the use with little resistance as the opponents will be rushing through a change on the opposite side of the ice. Not saying that's bad or good, just a consequence.
