ATLANTA
— Coming out of the lost lockout season two years ago, the NHL tried to wrestle obstruction out of the game with new enforcement standards and rules.
It worked.
To a point.
Obstruction and trapping slowly are creeping back into the game, with referees being less vigilant and coaching strategies and player mind-sets retreating to the dark days.
Yet there is a new and perhaps even bigger threat to the NHL’s entertainment value.
That’s the approach of backing up and erecting what isn’t quite like the human wall in front of a soccer free kick, but is at least reminiscent of it in intent. The goal is to block or tip shots, preventing the puck from getting through to the goaltender.
The NHL needs to take a look at legislating the strategy out of the game, whether with imaginative uses of additional lines and what could amount to defensive offsides standards, or something else.
“We’ve discussed that endlessly,” NHL senior vice president and director of hockey operations Colin Campbell said on the eve of the All-Star Game at Philips Arena. “When you make new rules, the first people who take a run at it — and they should — are the coaches. It’s their job to win, not to entertain.
“I guess we see teams back up. It’s tough to get shots through. We expect that in a competitive world. . . . There are certain things we’re looking at, we’re monitoring all the time. We’re talking to (general) managers and coaches constantly. We think that the stickwork and the interference, and at least the hooking and the holding, are being called adequately.”
Campbell, a former Rangers head coach, said: “You’re bound to see some impact with how coaches coach and how they try to get wins. The one thing I think we’re seeing, and you mentioned this, is backing up in your own zone. You hear these new terms all the time. I’ve been out of coaching for a while, but it’s (called) ‘come back to the house,’ or whatever it is.”
One of the other major issues causing problems for the league is an old one — ticket prices.
Only the numbers change, and it’s funny now to recall the outcry when the old Colorado Rockies had the nerve to raise their top price to $14 in the early 1980s.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman on Saturday disputed the widespread perception that the league had implied that trying to hold the line on ticket prices was at least an indirect issue in the lockout and desire for a salary cap; and that the NHL failed to follow through in the wake of the dark season.
Was that empty rhetoric?
“No, it wasn’t,” Bettman said. “I think there has been a tendency to characterize some of the things we said at the time not as accurately was they were said. What we said was we were in an inflationary system, and the system we were trying to get would mitigate the inflation.
“I believe . . . off the top of my head, if you took our average ticket price increase leaguewide for the last five years, it was about 0.2 percent. If you look at the other three major sports, they were looking at multiple percents, and I think over the same time period, their ticket prices went up 15 to 20 percent or more.
“We’ve basically been flat, barely up over the five-year time period because the inflationary pressure has been relieved. And we are playing to 92 percent of capacity.”
The softening of attendance in markets such as Denver is for a variety of reasons, some unique to each market. But one of the causes is a delayed effect from the lockout — the deterioration of the season- ticket base. That deterioration gains a momentum of its own once fans realize they can pick and choose and don’t necessarily have to have access to season tickets.
That’s where invoice shock, or even sticker shock for single-game tickets, comes into play.
“The reason that a particular team may have a softness in attendance is typically offset by a team that has a dramatic increase,” Bettman said.
SPOTLIGHT ON . . .
All-star captains Vinny Lecavalier and Jarome Iginla
ATLANTA — Neither of the captains in today’s NHL All-Star Game is a graybeard. Tampa Bay’s Vinny Lecavalier is 27, Calgary’s Jarome Iginla is 30.
As much as or more so than the league’s younger stars — whether Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin or Ilya Kovalchuk — the captains represent a leadership wing, in the tradition of Joe Sakic and Steve Yzerman.
On Saturday morning in Philips Arena, they renewed acquaintances, shook hands, then appeared together on the podium to discuss the hockey culture that at times seems to stress the team concept at the cost of showmanship.
With so many young stars in the All-Star Game itself, and with the league embracing the concept of showmanship with a Breakaway Challenge competition on Saturday night that encouraged stunts, could the attitudes be changing?
“It’s something that’s a little bit different in hockey,” Iginla said. “You look at some other sports, which have more talking in the media. Some of it can be enjoyable. . . . In hockey, I think it’s slowly changing. Since I’ve been in, it’s starting to change a little bit. People are starting to step out a little bit more, and I think it’s good for hockey.
“It’s definitely team first, but within the team there are a lot of different personalities that we see as a group of guys, but you don’t always see it in the media.”
This is the third all-star appearance for Lecavalier, who as a prospect was so highly touted, the Avalanche stockpiled 1998 first-round picks in an unsuccessful attempt to either directly end up with the No. 1 overall choice or trade for it.
Last year, he said, “I was just surprised how young the players were. I guess it’s a young stars league. . . . And I think it’s great for the league, it’s great for marketing. The last few years, it’s been going really great that way.”
