Idea: Allowing teams to ice a 7th D-Man

[JAK]

good luck getting the PA to agree on trimming the roster.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Swing Man

Eighteenth skater should be a swingman, hybrid defenceman / forward, used as needed. Brent Burns entered the league as a RW, Mathieu Dandeneault was very valuable with the Red Wings, playing forward and defence. Very common before rosters expanded to 18 skaters.

 

[Bending and Tending]

There is clearly a deficit of good defensemen in the league right now. Almost every other team is looking for "A solid top 4 D-man". The salary cap also makes it incredibly difficult to add quality defensemen. So, rather than simply wait until there is some sort of defensive renaissance, how about allowing teams to ice 7 dmen a game instead of 6.

Benefits of this:

1. You can spread out minutes more, thus allowing you, top to bottom, to get more quality minutes from every dman.

2. The emergence of specialty dmen. Far too often, specialty D, such as pp specialists or defensive minded dmen, are overlooked for "not being well rounded enough". Because of out limited D icing, every D man has to be "A solid, two way, puck moving" Dman. If we allow teams to ice more Dman, you can play niche Dman that otherwise wouldn't have a job.

3. Having spots for rookies to develop: It's hard to develop rookie d men, because no matter what minutes you have them play, you're still throwing them to the fire. With an extra spot, you can chose to throw in a rookie for limited minutes, thus allowing him to slowly get adjusted to the game.

4. Every team has a better opportunity to ice a decent D-squad, thus increasing parity and competitiveness within the league.

I'm confused. If the league lacks good defenseman, why would we create more jobs for defensemen? Good defensemen aren't going to pop out of thin air because there's an extra spot, especially since you claim they are lacking.

Also,
1. Coaches play their top D men for ~half the game. They already have 4 other guys to eat up minutes if they want the top players to play less.

2. The Dmen you'd call specialists are already employed. If they aren't well rounded enough they are #4+ in the depth charts

3. Rookies aren't going to develop by playing 7th man minutes. Either give them consistent, but sheltered minutes or let them actually play in the minors/juniors.

4. How is this any different than it is now?

Is this a joke thread I took seriously? (as seriously as you can take an interwebs thread)

 

[Cane mutiny]

Maybe I'm dreaming, but I thought they allowed that extra skater years ago, and cut it back to 18.

 

[me2]

The only reason I can see for this would be to have a specialist PP Dman, a guy who is great offensively but otherwise a complete liability because he's unplayably bad at 5 on 5. We all know how it would end, a bunch of goals and the refs becoming too scared to call penalties resulting in less PPs being called more interference.