Speculation: Potential off-season rule changes?

[RandyHolt]

This Pens 2nd period is what the game looks like if you call it tighter. Over 15 mins of PP. Not sure that is the answer.

I agree and its basically what I have been saying here.

Flow to the game is important. The league has gone to many lengths to make the game as fast as possible.

Perhaps in part because few to no one buys the commercial spots, and we end up with Joe Habeeb John Carlson commercials.

 

[HunterSThompson]

I agree and its basically what I have been saying here.

Flow to the game is important. The league has gone to many lengths to make the game as fast as possible.

Perhaps in part because few to no one buys the commercial spots, and we end up with Joe Habeeb John Carlson commercials.

Players will adapt and stop doing things that get called a penalty. The reason to call the penalties is not for more PPs, though that will be a short term side effect. It is so that players stop obstructing.

 

[Efactor]

Players will adapt and stop doing things that get called a penalty. The reason to call the penalties is not for more PPs, though that will be a short term side effect. It is so that players stop obstructing.

Maybe, but until then it becomes a disaster. I suspect you get enough vaguely negative against officiating postgame interviews that it would start to go back to normal not less obstruction. its a contact sport.

 

[fedfed]

This Pens 2nd period is what the game looks like if you call it tighter. Over 15 mins of PP. Not sure that is the answer.

Actually, when I was watching it I thought "Finally they decided to call it by the rulebook, I like it".

Yes, a lot of PPs kill flow, but also make the refs' decision easy to understand.

 

[RandyHolt]

I suspect the only reason they called all those penalties was to make sure the game didn't get out of hand. We have all seen that hundreds of times by now. I can see how fans like that, heck anything different is a start to liven things up.

But at the core of the excitement of hockey is the speed of the game. Penalties, whistles, PPs and PKing watching the passing around the perimeter before the near inevitable kill after a few clears, simply kills the speed of the game.

The onus is then on the PP to excite fans. Only, dare I think league wide average is only 15%. So 85 times out of 100 you are not even getting a goal. And that after the game has slowed down immensely, regardless if a goal is scored or not.

I predict the league will make goalie pads smaller this summer. They made them smaller before the 2013 season and no one noticed. They can make them much smaller still.

The more I think about the more I think 3 point games have to end. Conceivably teams could conspire to hunker down and play to a 1 1 tie, to fack another team, say a big physical team no one wants to face. Ties are rewarded far too much.

 

[Maruk moustache]

Don't see it happening anytime soon, but a little contraction wouldn't hurt. There are only so many really great players. More nonelite players means a less exciting game to watch.

I like the idea someone proposed of not scheduling back-to-backs, but if that would have to mean fewer games in the season, I guess that'll never happen, and I am guessing it would mean that--otherwise why wouldn't it have already happened?

I definitely do want goalie pads more like they were in the 80s. And the nets a little wider. Goalies seem wider now than they were in the 80s--not sure if that's their bodies or what they're wearing or a little of both. It's looked pretty difficult to score for a while now when you just look at any goalie standing there at the net. I just remember the net seeming so much bigger thirty years ago.

I wouldn't at all mind making goal differential the first standings tiebreaker. That'd probably loosen things up a little.