We’re in the third season of the post-lockout NHL, and the results have been mixed.
A few observations on the post-lockout world:
* This has been hashed, rehashed, spindled and mutilated, and the post-lockout scheduling format will be changed next season. The only question is: How?
With general managers scheduled to take up the question this week at their meetings, one proposal being kicked around is to go from 82 games back to 84 games, a brief NHL experiment when the league tried neutral-site regular-season games in the 1992-93 and 1993-94 seasons.
My response: No!
It would be a mathematical convenience — six games against the four division opponents, three games against the 10 other teams in the conference, and a home-and-home against the 15 teams in the opposite conference.
It seems like a small thing, but that’s two games too many. It adds somewhere around $400 to the season-ticket bill for a two-seat invoice — and that’s if per-game base prices aren’t raised. The league’s single biggest problem is ticket prices, and the two additional games would cause further damage.
In my ideal world, the way to go would be six games against divisional opponents and two against everyone else, for a total of 74. I realize that has no chance of flying, in part because it would blur conference distinctions. I’d make the case it actually would be economically beneficial in the long run — but that sort of long-range thinking rarely is taken into consideration.
Juggle any way possible that starts with fewer than the ridiculous eight games against division opponents and with a home-and-home against the opposite conference, but the return to an 84-game season should be laughed out of the room.
* The trapezoid behind the goal line should be erased.
I hated this innovation from the start.
Not allowing the goalies to play the puck behind the goal line beyond the trapezoid, preventing them from meandering out and getting the puck up ice, sounds good in theory. However, it unduly penalizes the goalies who were great at it, including the New Jersey Devils’ Martin Brodeur, and removes the potential for a goalie fouling up, as happened more often than the powers-that-be seemed to acknowledge.
* The rule that wasn’t adopted — no-touch icing — is an idea whose time has come on the NHL level … and, actually, that has been true for years. The one time in 32 instances the forward beats the defenseman to the puck doesn’t justify the potential wear and tear on defensemen.
* Granted, the hurry-up faceoff came in before the lockout, but I have just one question about it five years later:
What happened to it?
* Not allowing the team that ices the puck to change before the ensuing faceoff is the greatest innovation since the Zamboni.
* Sorry, purists, but the five-minute overtime and shootout are working. I periodically vacillate on the issue of whether the NHL should further embrace the system by removing the guaranteed point for an overtime or shootout loser, and I move closer to taking that stand — albeit with an expansion to five shooters per team — every time I hear folks refusing to acknowledge the point inflation that comes with the proliferation of three-point games. (Note: “.500 hockey” now is about 90 points in a season, and having more wins than losses in the first two columns is NOT the measure of .500 hockey any longer.)
* And the deterioration in enforcement of anti-obstruction standards has been both inevitable and unfortunate.
Footnotes. As Brodeur comes within shouting distance of Patrick Roy’s career league record of 551 regular-season victories, it again becomes clear that with all the changes over the years — including the length of schedules, institution of overtime in 1983-84 and then the shootout — apples-to-apples comparisons aren’t possible.
Roy had 131 regular-season ties on his ledger when he retired. The man whose career victory record he wiped out, Terry Sawchuk, who finished with 172 ties, never had a chance to add to his win total in overtime. Roy ended up with 104 victories more than Sawchuk, so that’s not an asterisk, but just one more indication that conditions weren’t the same.
In this instance, Brodeur will benefit from having additional opportunities for victories in shootouts, from 2005-06 and beyond. Brodeur had 10 shootout victories (in 16 attempts) last season, for example.
Spotlight on …
Vincent Lecavalier, C, Lightning
If only Tampa Bay general manager Phil Esposito hadn’t been so stubborn … or, at least in this instance, so smart.
Through the first quarter of the season, Vincent Lecavalier has been the league’s most valuable player, with 15 goals and 36 points after the Lightning’s Friday night loss at Carolina. Granted, cases also can be made for Detroit’s Henrik Zetterberg and Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, a point Lecavalier more than willingly concedes.
“You look at Sidney Crosby, (Washington’s Alex) Ovechkin, these guys are going to be the best players in the league for the next 15 years,” Lecavalier said last week in a conference call. “Zetterberg this year is doing unbelievable.”
Lecavalier, 27, is coming off his Rocket Richard Trophy season of 2006-07, when he had 52 goals for the Lightning, and it all adds up to further maturation for the player the Avalanche coveted as the 1998 draft approached, loading up on first-round choices in the hope of either getting the right one or being able to use them in a package to obtain the top overall pick. Instead, when the Lightning refused all offers for the top pick, Colorado settled for taking Alex Tanguay, Robyn Regehr, Martin Skoula and Scott Parker, all in the first round.
This season, especially, it has helped that Lecavalier and the Lightning are in the Southeast Division, laden with offensive talent, but also with more of an open-it-up philosophy than some other divisions.
That said, Lecavalier unquestionably is on a roll.
“Once you start scoring, it seems like you can really see the net,” he said. “But, you know, if you go three, four, five games, you get to squeezing your stick a little bit, obviously you see the goalie a lot bigger. It kind of goes both ways.
“Right now, my confidence or our confidence is pretty good. When I get in front of a goalie, it’s all about confidence, I think. If you’re calm and you don’t squeeze your stick, good things will happen.”
