Jiji Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 Those goofy looking nets would give shooters off the rush more to shoot at, no? It would make it very difficult for butterfly/positional goalies to take away almost all daylight, which is the point of introducing larger nets. While I agree that they need referees to actually make calls and consistently to eliminate all the chintzy shit defenders get away with, I don't necessarily think the issue would be solved by purely removing most of the obstruction from the game. The media reinforces a lot of the bullshit too. Healy and Johnson bitching about the blatant De La Rose trip in the third period today was shameful. They specifically said it was a trip but shouldn't be a penalty at that time of such an important game. I remember around 2011 the Sedins criticized the league for having two sets of rules: one for the regular season and another for the playoffs. They have a valid point. Players often get away with murder in the playoffs because, hey, it's the playoffs. And are you saying dudes couldn't waterski with hooks back in the day? Some of the hooking and holding players got away with in the olden days was ridiculous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabe Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 NHL officiating is just so awful. Stick checking that's NOT a hook will get called but Steven Stamkos can crosscheck a guy head first into the boards and be so sure he won't get a penalty for it that he feels good complaining about a non-call on the same play*. The refs are wildly inconsistent and let stuff go and then call penalties based on game situations. It's nonsense. * - Stamkos railed Luke Glendening into the boards. Glendening reached out and briefly hooked Stamkos's ankle while laying on the ice, not even slowing him down. Stamkos, having just committed a penalty worthy of five & a game with no call, then complained about Glendening not getting a penalty. Good grief. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabe Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 And, personally, I'd love to see more goals off the rush. Give the shooters something to look for from 30 feet out instead of the goalies just blocking out the sun. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jiji Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 As awful as the goalies were in the '80s and how it was too easy to score off the rush (how many goals did Bossy score from 40 feet out with shots more or less right along the ice?), there is hardly any drama when an offensive player has the beating of his defender on the outside in a 1v1 these days. Goalies come way out to cut off the angle. Bigger nets won't make it easy to score but it would give some hope for the attacker in those situations and create some excitement for fans. I always thought reducing goalie equipment size was the answer, but apparently it's not possible without safety becoming an issue and with the way players are blasting the puck with those composites that's understandable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dewar Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 You would think with all of the technological advances, a smaller set of hockey pads that protects the same as the current set of hockey pads would be possible. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serious Darius Bagfelt Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 Not just the pads being bigger, they are ridiculously light. The old brown horse hair pads weighed as much as 20 pounds each. Get them wet after a couple of periods and they must have felt like lead weights. New pads are 9 pounds. Equipment in general has gotten better. Watch these maniacs block shots now. Guys were full time flamingos years ago. Outside of bigger nets you are limited to what you can do. Cant play 4 on 4, cant shrink equipment and calling holding and such consistently would be great but the game would be one long power play plus people are argueing the obstruction has to be there with the speed the guys can go now. What more can you do? Limit physical contact. People would shit all over that but back in the day you didn't "finish your checks" and take guys out when they didn't have the puck. Bigger nets is all you have. 4th liners are too good and on the better teams defensively sound. Back in the 70's when there was 32-34 teams and they were made up 95% or so out of Canadian guys good teams had two lines that could score. The shit teams had one guy, a couple of pluggers and 3 lines of cement heads and goons that could barely tie their skates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabe Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 Yeah, the decreased weight in pads and increased size and athleticism of goalies has led to goalies that cover waaaaaaaay more gross than ever before. That's not even accounting for vastly improved technique and coaching. Now add to that the fact that just about every guy can skate and just about every guy blocks shots. Add it all up and it's a ton harder to score goals. That has the effect of leveling the playfield, preventing talented teams from separating themselves quite as much. So what's the fix? Pads aren't getting smaller. Guys aren't going to get slower or stop blocking shots. That leaves rules enforcement and the net size. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jiji Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 Pretty much. I still don't think we're too far away from having the technology to keep goalies safe but also reduce their equipment size. Until then, making the nets bigger and calling it tighter is the way to go. While quite a few of the low-scoring 2-1 games in these playoffs have been pretty darn good, I still think the league really needs to evaluate net sizes. It's a sacred cow for them though and that's why it'll probably get laughed off until the best players aren't even hitting a PPG pace regularly. Teams scored an average of 2.73 goals per game this season (64th out of 97 NHL seasons). The post-lockout season of 2005-06, when the obstruction shit was called very tightly, had an average of 3.08 (37th highest all-time), so if they aren't going to look at net size then at least go back to referees actually refereeing and not game managing. The NHL put out a BS article last year, I think, saying that penalties and scoring are down because players have adapted to the new rules. Uh huh. The post-lockout season had the most recorded power play opportunities in the league's history with 5.85 per team, 0.4 higher than second highest ('87-'88). This season was the lowest since they started recording PP statistics all the way back in the 1963-'64 season at 3.06 per team. That's ridiculous. No fucking wonder scoring is down so much. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sabremike Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 I am hopelessly torn: on one hand it would be nice for refs to start calling obvious penalties, but there is nothing worse than a game featuring a constant parade to the box. Would like to see a happy medium if possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jiji Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 There is. Go back to calling it like '05-'06, put up with a few years of lunkheads learning how it's going to be called, keep calling it the same way, and then players may adapt and you can have more open hockey without all the penalties. Instead, they called it extremely tight in year 1, called 2 PPs per game fewer the next year, and then went back to normal, all the while players adapted to take out only the most obvious shit. This isn't the '70s where you had low skill level throughout much of the league as SDB stated above. There are a tonne of really talented kids that can skate extremely well, so scoring should be way up. The alternative to all of this is create a Terminator-esque time machine and send Arnold back to take out Francois Allaire and Patrick Roy. And Garth Snow. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie M. Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 To borrow a Jeff Marek-ism, hockey has always been a low scoring sport. We're trying to recapture a time period that was an outlier. My fear for bigger nets is for coaches to tighten things up even more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabe Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 I am hopelessly torn: on one hand it would be nice for refs to start calling obvious penalties, but there is nothing worse than a game featuring a constant parade to the box. Would like to see a happy medium if possible.In the 1995 pre-season, the NHL asked refs to call things super-tight - so they did. I remember Detroit having a game where they had 21 power plays. It was a joke but I could live with stuff like that if it led to better, more consistent officiating like we saw right after this last lockout. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jiji Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 To borrow a Jeff Marek-ism, hockey has always been a low scoring sport. We're trying to recapture a time period that was an outlier. My fear for bigger nets is for coaches to tighten things up even more. I don't think I would even want to see another player get 50 in 50. And while a lot of people think of the '80s-1993 as "regular levels of scoring" and Marek has some merit there, we're actually below the late '90s/early '00s/late dead puck era of scoring. Teams scored 2.74 GPG in 2012/13 and 2.73 this season. In '99/'00: 2.75 and 2.76 the next year. Yeesh. As the chart spoilered for size shows, it's pretty volatile over time but I feel like scoring is being lowered artificially and not so much a lack of skill more so now than ever before. 6 goals per game is a nice, happy medium. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie M. Posted April 28, 2015 Share Posted April 28, 2015 Is there a chart like that for just even strength goals? I wonder if that changes things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sabremike Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Hart finalists: Cary Price, John Tavares and Ovie. Price is going to win it but in just about any other year JT would've won. This is actually his second finalist nod in the past three seasons, and as I've said before he is one of the few players in the NHL worth the price of admission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabe Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Not particularly bold prediction: Mike Babcock has coached his last game with Detroit. Todd McLellan or Jeff Blashill are my early favorites to get the gig. Would prefer Babcock though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 all the talking heads seems to think it will be the AHL coach, who they kept from interviewing for other hc jobs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jiji Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Exactly. They've kept him close because they knew this day was coming. Blashill is the easy choice for them. They love to develop their players through the AHL and he's gone through a similar learning curve and he's familiar with a huge chunk of their team as they're getting younger and younger. Makes too much sense for them to go externally. It's not a good thing for Detroit that they missed 35-year-old, beat the fuck up, concussion riddled Franzen, is it? He hasn't played anything close to a full season since '11-'12. Babs in Edmonton would suck. I hope he goes to Toronto but at this point I think the only allure for him there would be it's close to home and the dollars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Im intrigued by the idea of hitchcock going to EDM, which seems like a terrible mix. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabe Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Franzen wasn't missed. Heck, he hasn't been any good since 2011/12. Detroit needs a center, a power forward, and a defenseman. And they need somebody with some sandpaper in his game other than Abdelkader. And maybe a Zetterberg who doesn't disappear for the entire second half of the season. But they're light years ahead of the decrepit mess they were midway through last season when every guy on the roster was 500 years old and slower than me on skates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jiji Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Well, Franzen is that power forward and when he's around, he does put up offensive numbers (he's been around that ~.7 ppg rate the past three years). I'm with you that they're moving in the right direction though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Death From Above Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 I worry about Zetterberg. Great player but he's 34 and he's had back surgery. I know in hockey you can hang around until 38 pretty easily in a 30-team NHL but still, he's a guy I am sad I will never see the best of again. I was also shocked to find out Kronwall is 34. Shit, has he been around that long? I wonder if Babcock getting off the bus in Detroit has any chance for things go to sideways there for a year or two like when Alex Ferguson saw the writing on the wall with Manchester United, he got out while he could, and they went through (for them) a giant turd of a period. If they could ever fool someone into taking Franzen's contract it would help them a lot in the free agent game (not that there's a great pool out there this year). I'd say that can't happen but the Leafs moved Clarkson so anything really is possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabe Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Well, Franzen is that power forward and when he's around, he does put up offensive numbers (he's been around that ~.7 ppg rate the past three years). I'm with you that they're moving in the right direction though.When he's not scoring goals, Franzen is basically useless on the ice. He will go through multi-game stretches where he's invisible and lacking in effort. And the last few years, he's been a "power forward" in size only. He's a lot like the Detroit version of Todd Bertuzzi in that way - a big body that simply stopped being gritty and hitting people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jiji Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Still though, those points have to be valuable when he's on because scoring is at such a premium. If he didn't have a stupid Luongo contract, Holland could probably fleece some team in a Franzen deal. But, if my aunt had balls... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Man Known as Dan Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Not particularly bold prediction: Mike Babcock has coached his last game with Detroit. Todd McLellan or Jeff Blashill are my early favorites to get the gig. Would prefer Babcock though. Will make a bold prediction that the Blues will throw everything and the kitchen sink to get Babcock if he becomes available. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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