The National Hockey League of today is not the same National Hockey League that I grew up in the early 2000s which really depresses me. The game today is a shell of what it used to be and I believe fans across North America feel the same way.
Lack of Physicality in the NHL
The most apparent difference in the game today compared to back then is absence of hitting and fighting. In 2020, you can go to an NHL game and if you’re are lucky, hear the rattling of the boards from a bone-jarring hit maybe once a game. This is quite a deviation from how the game used to be. The times of going to New York Islanders game when Cal Clutterbuck, Casey Cizukus and Matt Martin were raining terror on opposing defensive pairings might be over. There was never a shift that you didn’t head former Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitol player Brook Orpik on the ice. The big, open ice hitter is a build we’ll most likely never see anymore.
Hockey Fights are also less common now. When games started to get out of hand back in the day, it was almost guaranteed several fights were going to break out. (Fun fact – I was actually at that game, the Penguins got absolutely throttled. There were so many fights!) In the league today, fights are broken up before they are even started.
It is totally understandable that the changes were made because of player safety. That is a totally plausible cause to get behind because it’s making a game safe for the players. But it’s taken the game to the point that we are playing no-touch hockey.
NHL Coaches Challenges
Hockey is not a sport that can be perfectly officiated. It is way to fast and has too much going on. Referees are going to blow calls. That’s why there are makeup calls. When the NHL brought in the coaches’ challenges my heart sank.
There is just no place for it in the NHL. We just need to see if the puck crossed the line. What was wrong with just going up to Toronto to get a decision? Nothing. The NHL wanted to create a suspense factor and give the coaches a bigger role in how a game will play out. Do I burn a coach’s challenge in the first period and lose my timeout if it fails? It’s so dumb. The NHL is not the National Football League.
NHL Overtime Rules
When they introduced the shootout in 2005, it was great. It brought an excitement to overtime. That faded pretty quickly. It turned games into a skills competition. The NHL only made this worse but added in a 3v3 gameplay before the shootout.
Now the benefits are that fewer games are going to the shootout. But now, overtime feels like a glorified practice session. Teams that are necessarily the better team on the night have a chance to win points because they have better-skilled players. This is the only sport where the overtime format is a complete 180 from normal gameplay (NFL has its own issues which I’ll leave for another blog piece). The current NHL overtimes rules is like having an Oklahoma Drill to decide a winner for an NFL Football Game. It’s ridiculous. Please bring back the tie.
NHL Divisions, Conferences and Schedules
The realignment the NHL did a few years back is absolutely atrocious. They aimed to create more rivalry games by putting more geographically similar in each division. The problem is that all the rivalries are gone! Bring back the days of the old Atlantic division. They used to play each other 8 times a year! That is more than enough time to get to know each other and eventually get sick of playing each other. Today, teams in each division only play on average 4 times a year against each other. There is just no way for a rivalry to develop unless a dramatic event happens like a superstar injury.
The 2020 Atlantic Division makes no sense. How can you force teams from Canada and the Northeast to travel down to Florida to play games and vice versa? How can you expect the Montreal Canadians to have a rivalry with the Florida Panthers? This needs fixing.
Conclusion
Its really been a shame to see the NHL where it is at today. Granted, it is still fun to watch on occasion and I love still going to live games. However, when I only yearn to reminisce about the old school days of the NHL.
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