New Rules?

[French Rage]

To hell with shootouts.  Instead, every 5 minutes in OT you add another puck to the ice.  Multi-puck!

[Weder]

To hell with shootouts.  Instead, every 5 minutes in OT you add another puck to the ice.  Multi-puck!

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkqW147AGwc[/video]

[Towerroad]

To hell with shootouts.  Instead, every 5 minutes in OT you add another puck to the ice.  Multi-puck!

Make it really fun, no offsides, no icing.

[ftyuv]

To hell with shootouts.  Instead, every 5 minutes in OT you add another puck to the ice.  Multi-puck!

Make it really fun, no offsides, no icing.

This is getting ridiculous.

I mean, really, how can you leave out the strobe lights?

[Rosey]

Does [transportation] really need any changes? [Horse-draw carriages] seem pretty good as-is.

Yes, I know you're joking, but the punchline isn't apt: no one came along and, by diktat, took away everyone's horse and buggy and replaced it with a car: cars won in the marketplace because they were better and people demanded them. If someone wants some game other than hockey (let's call it "suckey"), let them set up their own suckey league and see if it wins fans away from existing leagues. Otherwise, IMO there's got to be a really high standard for screwing with the rules of the game.

[ftyuv]

Does [transportation] really need any changes? [Horse-draw carriages] seem pretty good as-is.

Yes, I know you're joking, but the punchline isn't apt: no one came along and, by diktat, took away everyone's horse and buggy and replaced it with a car: cars won in the marketplace because they were better and people demanded them. If someone wants some game other than hockey (let's call it "suckey"), let them set up their own suckey league and see if it wins fans away from existing leagues. Otherwise, IMO there's got to be a really high standard for screwing with the rules of the game.

Are you really suggesting that (a) the rules of college hockey are absolutely perfect, don't need any tweaks at all, and will never need them, and (b) if they weren't, the proper way to tweak a rule is to set up a parallel league, which should then try to compete solely on the merit of a relatively minor distinction and get schools to either create two hockey teams or switch entirely to this league? I really hope that this idea is as serious as my strobe-light proposal above.

[Trotsky]

Carriages and cars are accidental (so to speak) tools for transportation, so their form is arbitrary and ever-evolving in the service of that goal.

Hockey OTOH simply is hockey.  It is its own essence.  There are secondary goals (safety, entertainment, 19th century social values of Muscular Christianity to keep the prole workforce healthy and distracted), but there is no ultimate goal except itself.

[Rosey]

Does [transportation] really need any changes? [Horse-draw carriages] seem pretty good as-is.

Yes, I know you're joking, but the punchline isn't apt: no one came along and, by diktat, took away everyone's horse and buggy and replaced it with a car: cars won in the marketplace because they were better and people demanded them. If someone wants some game other than hockey (let's call it "suckey"), let them set up their own suckey league and see if it wins fans away from existing leagues. Otherwise, IMO there's got to be a really high standard for screwing with the rules of the game.

Are you really suggesting that (a) the rules of college hockey are absolutely perfect, don't need any tweaks at all, and will never need them, and (b) if they weren't, the proper way to tweak a rule is to set up a parallel league, which should then try to compete solely on the merit of a relatively minor distinction and get schools to either create two hockey teams or switch entirely to this league? I really hope that this idea is as serious as my strobe-light proposal above.

No, I'm not seriously suggesting that. But I don't really get the notion of screwing with the basic rules of the game to generate more goals. If people don't like watching hockey because there isn't enough scoring, they should go watch a different fucking game and stop screwing with the one I like. Yeah, money means that the NHL is always going to tweak things to chase more eyeballs, but that doesn't mean college teams need to follow suit: they've successfully managed to avoid the shootout abomination, so it can be done.

[ftyuv]

Does [transportation] really need any changes? [Horse-draw carriages] seem pretty good as-is.

Yes, I know you're joking, but the punchline isn't apt: no one came along and, by diktat, took away everyone's horse and buggy and replaced it with a car: cars won in the marketplace because they were better and people demanded them. If someone wants some game other than hockey (let's call it "suckey"), let them set up their own suckey league and see if it wins fans away from existing leagues. Otherwise, IMO there's got to be a really high standard for screwing with the rules of the game.

Are you really suggesting that (a) the rules of college hockey are absolutely perfect, don't need any tweaks at all, and will never need them, and (b) if they weren't, the proper way to tweak a rule is to set up a parallel league, which should then try to compete solely on the merit of a relatively minor distinction and get schools to either create two hockey teams or switch entirely to this league? I really hope that this idea is as serious as my strobe-light proposal above.

No, I'm not seriously suggesting that. But I don't really get the notion of screwing with the basic rules of the game to generate more goals.

Okay. But just so we're clear, that's not what I was suggesting.

[upprdeck]

these basic hockey rules are already far different than the basic hockey rules of even 10-20 years ago..

[billhoward]

This is the sixties all over again: America - Love It or Leave It. A band that calls itself the purists or true fans dislikes change and argues, "If you don't like the game, go found your own league." You could dislike change and keep out change all the way down to where there are no fans left.

None of these changes are so extreme as basketball's shot clock. The NBA started in 1954 and the NCAA with the deliberate speed of southern states moving on Brown vs. Board of Ed got around to it 30 years later after Tennessee beat Temple 11-6 and - what's the rush, boys? - made it 45 seconds, then 35 seconds a decade later. Purists also freaked out over the ABA's 3-point field goal that the NBA added in 1979. All of that adds scoring.  

A 1-0 title game might be exciting for purist hockey fans but a steady diet of low-scoring games is not going to move the sport forward if "forward" means attracting fans.

[RichH]

A 1-0 title game might be exciting for purist hockey fans but a steady diet of low-scoring games is not going to move the sport forward if "forward" means attracting lowest common denominator American fans.

FYP.

If basketball still had 11-6 games, I might be interested in watching more than the last 15 seconds, which can take 20 minutes anyway.

[ftyuv]

A 1-0 title game might be exciting for purist hockey fans but a steady diet of low-scoring games is not going to move the sport forward if "forward" means attracting lowest common denominator American fans.

FYP.

If basketball still had 11-6 games, I might be interested in watching more than the last 15 seconds, which can take 20 minutes anyway.

That's a straw man; nobody's arguing that hockey needs to have triple-digit goals. Some people are arguing that a couple extra goals per game would be nice; others are arguing that a winner per game would be nice; others are arguing that other areas of the game -- totally unrelated to points -- could be improved, and if there are a couple extra goals per game as a byproduct, it's not the end of the world.

Food for thought: if you had a couple more goals a game, there'd probably be fewer ties, which would then lessen the pressure to turn those ties into wins/losses via a shootout. The purists might cry fowl on this argument, noting their favorite option of "do neither," but they should then be prepared to be disappointed by two rule changes rather than one. (I suspect they won't really be disappointed, because they'll have a great consolation prize in being able to whine about it for years, probably as they yell at kids to get off their lawn.)

[Rosey]

The purists might cry fowl on this argument

Ba-COCK!

After a bunch of thought, you're probably right that I'm making too much of this. As long as the basics of the game are preserved, a minor rule change here or there is probably not that huge a deal. I think mostly what I bristle at are attempts to change the rules to chase a demographic that is currently uninterested in hockey, in the hopes that "GOALZ!" will make them instant fans. In the limit, the evidence is that hockey could slowly morph into football and be more popular, but should that really be the aim?

[ftyuv]

The purists might cry fowl on this argument

Ba-COCK!

After a bunch of thought, you're probably right that I'm making too much of this. As long as the basics of the game are preserved, a minor rule change here or there is probably not that huge a deal. I think mostly what I bristle at are attempts to change the rules to chase a demographic that is currently uninterested in hockey, in the hopes that "GOALZ!" will make them instant fans. In the limit, the evidence is that hockey could slowly morph into football and be more popular, but should that really be the aim?

I mean, the fear is legit, and it's good that people think through every rule change and make sure that that's not where we're heading. But I still think the puck gets frozen too much -- as a problem in its own right, not because it reduces scoring.

Is this our kumbaya moment, when we all remember that we're on the same side, the side of keeping hockey the best sport that doesn't involve tricking ships into wrecking on a private island and then hunting their passengers? (<-- I'm not pyscho, it's a literary reference!)