If It Is Broke, Fix It

I voted for George W. Bush, but before you hold that against me, please listen to my reasoning. He promised to bring a new tone to Washington DC, one in which negativity and back-biting would not come from the White House as an example to the rest of our fine capital. The problem is he has as good a chance of succeeding as the NHL has eliminating obstruction from the game. The bigger problem is both Washington and the NHL desperately need to get rid of their corresponding issues. The number one reason that attendance is low, ratings are low, and interest in the sport is low is because of the clutch and grab tactics limiting the speed and skill of the fastest game on earth as it is played in the
NHL (the NHL is not hockey and hockey is not the NHL just think Olympics).

Not the Trap, Overexpansion, or Violence?
You must be thinking this guy is nuts to think that obstruction is the number one problem plaguing the NHL today. Truly the trap is the problem or overexpansion or violence. I say if you really think about it every other problem is really an outer issue compared to obstruction. The trap is just good defense without the clutching and grabbing any team would be foolish to not play defense. Overexpansion helped make obstruction worse and violence in the game is just a natural result of the frustration born from the lower level of play. If you question that violence is a perceived part of the game look no further than the Peca knee incident or dare I say the over hyped McSorley-Brashear incident.

It’s About Mind Share!
Clutching and grabbing must be eliminated from the NHL or the sport will either go away or take a back seat to soccer and allow basketball to gain even more mind share. Ask just about any parent in the US what sport they want their kids to play and inevitably hockey will be the last thing on the list.
Soccer and basketball will be at the top along with baseball and to a lesser extent football. Why?
The US and even the world sees the NHL as hockey and the product on the ice is thought of as a mauling on skates. Ever heard the tired old saying, “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out?” I get so tired of that whenever I tell people that I play.

So Much to Offer
It’s all a shame too, because the NHL has had so much going for it. Think about it the NHL
as the only sport that has international and US mind share. No other sport really has that yet, but soccer is in the rear view mirror, especially after the US was so successful in the World Cup this year. Except for Japan and Cuba
(and some other Central American states), no other country has really adopted baseball. American football and basketball are getting closer, but most countries still don’t get it. Hockey has European, Canadian, and most importantly, because of the money to back it, US support. Other countries are following like
Japan and Australia. If you include roller hockey, much of the rest of the world
is starting to play as well. As a side note: is it really the best thing to do for the NHL to pull its players from the Winter Games in Torino? 

Besides, what sport requires more skill than hockey? Somebody said it best, “Hockey is a sport played on an artificial surface (ice), wearing artificial feet (skates), using an artificial limb (stick) and the objective is to get a weird shaped object (puck) into a goal while 6 guys (including a goalie) try to stop you.” To me there is no other sport like it yet what we see on the ice day after day is people like Paul Kariya flying down the ice only to be taken down by some minor leaguer before he can make the spectacular move we know he is capable of. There is a picture of Kariya being hooked to the ice in a book called “The Death of Hockey.” The caption below reads sarcastically, “Nobody wanted to see Kariya make that great move and score anyway” or something along those lines.

What the NHL Should Do Now
Enough babbling here are the three things I think the NHL can do today to FINALLY eliminate obstruction from the
game (which the NHL has promised…again).

1. Call every living thing in the rulebook. The rulebook is good as
   it is today. The problem I believe is that the refs have been bullied into putting their whistles away for the most part. Want proof? NHL officials called everything by the book in the Olympics. High hits, blows to the head, hooking everything. If you had coaches and players yelling at you all the time and getting away with it you would put your whistle away too. Think that will “slow the game down” because of all the penalties? What does clutch and grab hockey do?
   Speed it up? As an aside, the NHL should no longer tolerate the berating of officials to support this plan. Coaches
   – stop yelling at the referee and get control of your team. Players – stop embarrassing the referee by ranting and raving all the way to the penalty box.
2. Stop expansion now. 30 teams? Do we really believe there is enough talent in the world to stock 30 teams in the NHL
   and their farm teams with talented players? In another 5-10 years maybe there will be enough talent especially if the NHL makes a commitment to
   international play. Not just in the Olympics, but World Championship events and others as well. Also, things like the NHL
   Diversity Task Force that tries to expand hockey to people who normally would not think of lacing the skates will help expand interest.
   Unfortunately today we basically have teams with one, maybe two good lines –
   and that’s if they are rich. The rest of the teams are made up of minor leaguers at best. You don’t believe me? Consider how many people play
   basketball in the world, it has to be in the hundreds of millions because of accessibility. How many players play in the NBA, arguably the highest level of the sport? These
   NHL teams have to resort to clutch and grab to compete.
3. Do away with the Instigator Rule, BUT somehow make fighting more passionate. I run the risk of having all of you on
   hockeyfights.com hate me, but hear me out. The Instigator Rule was established to try to limit fighting, but it did not accomplish that. What it did was create an atmosphere where obstruction is ok. Do you think Gordie Howe ever had to deal with clutch and grab tactics? No because every NHL wannabe that had to resort to those tactics would be introduced to his fists. I could write complete article on how to bring passion back into fights but suffice it to say I believe there should be quality fighting in the NHL not quantity. The fights we see today are passionless, meaningless bouts against people who are paid to fight and not score goals. I like a fight as much as the next person but it sure would be nice to see a fight that occurred because the two people were just plain pissed at each other rather than
   to "inspire their team” or whatever the reasoning is these days, true
   or not.

I love the USA and the NHL. Both have their issues, but are the best example of democracy at work and hockey respectively. I truly hope that both can make the changes they need to have long term, successful futures. My greatest hope is that the 2002-2003 season is the start of an NHL that showcases the
speed and skill of the game and not the clutch and grab. Then, as in the Olympics, we will see the likes of Mike Modano, Brett Hull, Paul Kariya, Joe Sakic, and even all those nameless Belarusians shine. One last note from
a retired-NHL player that today doesn’t know if he would even play the game and doesn’t want his kids playing it either.
As he puts it: “sports should bring out the best in a person and I’m not sure hockey does anymore.” Ouch.