There were five 1-0 games in the NHL last week, culminated by the Rangers 1-0 shootout win over Boston on Sunday. It seems like there are more 1-0 games than ever before in the NHL this year, including the 2003-04 season when scoring was at the lowest level since the original expansion in 1967. This is not good for hockey. I am not one of those people who thinks every game needs to be 8-5, and that said, I am not an advocate of bigger nets. However, there needs to be more than 1 goal scored in a game. If games aren't 1-0, many of them are 2-1 or 3-2 in overtime or a shootout, and many of these games are very predictable. How can the NHL increase scoring (6 goals combined seems to be the popular consensus amongst experts such as Barry Melrose and Damian Cox for the average number of goals there should be in a game) without doing something as drastic as making the nets bigger? Here are my thoughts.
The style of play needs to be changed. That's the bottom line. During the lockout 04-05 season, one of the new rules that was adapted was eliminating two line passes, which was supposed to eliminate the trap. It worked for about half a season. Then teams discovered the 1-2-2, which isn't too hard to break, but many teams now play the 1-4, which has one passive forechecker in the offensive zone and the remaining four players stacked across the defensive blue line. This is almost impossible to skate through, so teams have to dump and chase. If this doesn't work, then more often than not the defending team sets up a controlled breakout, the team that dumped the puck in sets up their own trap, and we go the other way. If they do manage to get into the zone and get set up, then they are often confined to passing around the perimeter as the other team clusters all five players in the slot around the goaltender. The attacking team has to take an outside shot that either gets blocked, or is a routine save for the goaltender. There is a slight chance that the puck will grow a set of eyes and find its way into the net, but this happens maybe one out of 70 shots. This is what happens in most of the 1-0 games. There are a lot of shots (The Islanders took 53 on Florida in their 1-0 loss last week) but most of the shots could have been stopped by a pee-wee. There are very few good scoring chances and no rebounds or sustained pressure around the net.
I don't understand why teams refuse to play aggressive. You don't want to be overly aggressive, but what's wrong with a 3 man forecheck with the third guy staying high in the zone? I can't tell you how many times I've seen a puck squirt into the high slot begging to be blasted on goal or passed to a forechecker for a one timer, but nobody is there because teams are in their precious trap. Anaheim beat Detroit in the playoffs last year in OT in one of the later games in the series because they suddenly played a very aggressive forecheck, caused a turnover, and scored. Why don't teams do this for the entire game??? Sure, you might give up an odd man rush, but I will give up a 3 on 2 all day long. Half the time they are broken up at the blue line, 47% of the time the goalie makes the save or the shot misses the net, and MAYBE 3% of the time the team scores. If the third forechecker stays high in the zone like he is supposed to, then he can get back and tie the third attacker up before one of the other players can drop a pass to him or a good rebound chance emerges. Trapping just doesn't make sense to me.
The Western Conference is much worse about this than the Eastern Conference. In the east, if there is going to be 1-0 game, there is a 99.9% chance that Florida, Boston, New Jersey, or the Rangers are involved. All of those teams have trouble scoring but have coaches who preach defense first and play the aforementioned 1-4 trap and clogging the slot frequently. Most other Eastern Conference teams like to play a little more open style of play though. If you look at the scoring averages for the league, the average goals scored per game is about 2.7. There are six Eastern Conference teams below this number. Four of them are the teams mentioned in the last paragraph. However, the average number of goals per game in the East is 2.8, and would probably be closer to 2.9 if not for the four horrifically boring teams I mentioned. However, in the West, the average goals scored per game is only 2.6 This is terrible. Western Conference games are painful to watch because they are chess matches on a regular basis. Very rarely are they run and gun. There are low shot totals, which often results in low goal totals. Much of the game is played in the neutral zone. Calgary, Chicago, and Nashville are the only teams who are fairly entertaining. Detroit can score, but they play such oppressive defense that unless you are a Wings fan, you get so pissed off watching them do nothing but run controlled breakouts, trap, block shots and play puck possession that you have to turn the game off.
So the first step is to convince teams to stop the controlled breakouts, trapping, and clogging the slot and play a little more run and gun and a little less chess. Step number two is to reduce the size of goalie equipment. This is a HUGE problem. Look at a goalie from 1980 and a goalie today. Goalies say that they need to be better protected, which is true, but I think it is possible to have ample protection with today's technology without having the goalies look like robo cops. The chest protectors are the first thing that has to be downsized. They're beyond gigantic. The pads are second. I was a goalie up until 2005 so I know the tricks. The NHL has to ban +3, etc. additions to the top of pads and force goalies to wear the correct size pad. Look at Henrik Lundqvist. A goalie pad is supposed to have 6 inches of pad above the middle of the knee. His pads have 9 inches. This is a legal way of cheating. With those extra 3 inches on each pad, a goalie can have a wider butterfly but still cover the 5 hole. Almost every goalie has these oversized pads, and I've seen quite a few pucks hit those extra inches during a game. There go a bunch of goals every year. Ten inch wide pads need to be reintroduced too. This was the legal size limit until 1990. They then increased it to 12 inches, and then in 2005 reduced it to 11. I don't think every goalie complies to this rule, though. When the Sharks were in Philly the other week, Evgeni Nabokov's pads looked wider than 11 inches. They should also eliminate the cheater on the catching glove. If goalies are such good athletes, make them show their true reflexes. I can't tell you how many shots I stopped with my glove by getting a piece of the puck with the cheater. One practice just for the hell of it I played with a glove from about 1985, which is when the cheater was a new concept but was still much smaller than it is today. I got absolutely lit up on the glove side with the smaller glove. So NHL, grow a set and crack down on the goalies. While the style of play is a big reason scoring is so low, the size of goalies is just as big of a reason.
The NHL will not attract new fans in the States by being played like soccer, but that is what's happening. So Mike Babcock, Randy Carlyle, Jaques Demares, Lou Lamouriello, Tom Renney, Claude Julien et al., please ditch your incredibly boring defensive, "responsible" systems and try to entertain people. Professional sports are part of the entertainment business. 1-0 hockey games are not entertaining 99% of the time. Predictable 2-1 games are not entertaining. Fans shouldn't pay $80 for a ticket to be bored to death. Please, for the sake of the damn game, switch things up and have the game look like it did in Gretzky's hey day.
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