When Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock said last week he believed NHL nets ought to be bigger to increase scoring, the game’s usual collection of cattle ranchers rushed out to protect one of their most sacred cows. “Won’t somebody think of the holy record books?… said some. “Why are we targeting goalies all the time? They’ll have to totally re-learn the position if we go to bigger nets!… said others. And the most desperate of them all tried the outrageous exaggeration route by suggesting people who wanted bigger nets were demanding soccer-sized scoring zones and wanted to change the “fundamental… core of the sport.
All of those arguments are easily debunked. The NHL’s record books have been repeatedly altered over the years, thanks to the end of tied games, plus/minus statistics (which are now rightfully discredited) and advanced stats, among other evolutions. Believe it or not, hockey didn't disintegrate when any of those changes came into effect. Stats were not handed to the hockey community on stone tablets from a mountain-descending bearded prophet. Like the game itself, they’re fluid and organic in nature.
As for the Coasters/Charlie Brown “why’s everybody always pickin’ on me?… line of thinking when it comes to goalies: its proponents might have a valid point if we all forgot about what happened to NHL defensemen during the Great Obstruction Crackdown of 2005-06. Remember that? Remember how blueliners had what had been a fundamental tactic – wrapping their arms around an opponent and holding on as if their lives depended on it – outlawed in the name of catering to skill rather than skill's negation? Defensemen had played/obstructed in that manner for years, but were left with no choice but to evolve and become better positional defenders. Same went for forwards who’d made professional careers out of jamming their stick into an opponent’s stomach and waterskiing behind them. The league decided that, too, had to go, and NHLers were forced to adjust.
Finally, there’s nothing that exposes the baselessness of an argument like accusing someone of treason against the game for wanting to experiment with something new. When hockey lifers such as Babcock (or former NHL goalie and current Blue Jackets president John Davidson) are touting the need for bigger nets, you cannot harrumph and excuse this concept away as a flawed notion concocted by a bored media contingent secretly sent by soccer aficionados to bastardize it forever. Veteran hockey people see what thousands of us see – namely, that many, if not most goals are now borne of chaos, ricochets and borderline goalie interference, and the sheer physical growth of goaltenders alone necessitates some corresponding growth in the net area – and are reasonable enough to at least consider the merits of a slight increase instead of recoiling in horror as if their favourite pet was being handed off to another family.
Yes, there’s also an argument to be made for shrinking goalie equipment to increase scoring, but the league and NHL Players’ Association haven’t been able to make any meaningful headway in that department despite attempting to for years. However, they haven’t attempted anything to alter the nets – making them bigger, or angling the posts to try and direct pucks into the net – and it’s high time they did.
Here’s something else to remember: all the squawking, squealing and Chicken Little-ing from traditionalists in the past over changes to the game has eventually been exposed as nothing more than self-serving white noise. When it became clear staged fighting did nothing to improve a team’s chances at winning and NHL organizations moved away from the one-dimensional fighter, hockey did not fundamentally transform, and its popularity didn’t suffer in the least. When it was obvious you couldn’t ask fans to pay hundreds of dollars for tickets to see games regularly end in ties and shootouts were implemented to change that, the bottom didn’t fall out of the league, nor was there a mass exodus away from the ticket window. When obstruction became comically monstrous and the league addressed it, people wailed we’d somehow be making hockey less of a “man’s game… by removing it, but I don’t see the average fan lamenting the death of a game they no longer recognize.
To the contrary: People kept on showing up to see the league, both in person and on its broadcast platforms. Indeed, the NHL is now more popular and profitable than ever before, which should tell you how much stock you ought to put in this latest round of fear-mongering.
No matter what change is proposed now or down the line, there always will be a group of people determined to dig in their heels and stop it from happening. They’ll try to scare you into believing the unknown is infinitely worse than the status quo, and with the exception of the unfortunate Cooperalls Era, they’ll inevitably be proven incorrect.
And they’ll suffer the same fate when bigger nets are introduced. There'll be an adjustment period, of course, but the game will still be recognizable and millions of people will still love it. Hockey is stronger than any alteration to it, and those who tell you otherwise would be well-advised to strengthen their faith in the sport they say they adore.