The Coyotes are playing the Avs tonight, but with a week off between games, I don't really have all that much to tell you about tonight's game: The Avs and Coyotes are both bad teams, beset by a lack of defensive depth, the playing of non-NHL calibre players, lack of centre depth, questionable coaching and an seemingly old-school approach to roster management.
Both teams also have awesome young players that makes this one worth watching. Nathan MacKinnon and Max Domi are always worth your investment in watching the game, so you can't go wrong tonight at whatever time the game starts where you are (7pm Coyotes Standard Time).
The Coyotes should have Hanzal back tonight and Vermette is a game-time decision.
What I really want to talk about today, as you can see from the title, is making the nets bigger. But first, enjoy this sweet jam.
I didn't used to though. I thought that making the nets bigger would detract from the history of the game, that having bigger nets would make old records irrelevant and ruin the record book.
However, I realize now that those are pretty dumb concerns. There just isn't a way to make different eras comparable anyways. I don't know and I can't prove it, but I suspect that if Sidney Crosby played in the 80s he would be challenging Gretzky's reign at the top of the scoring charts, and would be capable of 200 points, no problem.
In the 80s, players didn't have their off-ice routines micromanaged, they weren't in the shape today's players are, they smoked, they drank, they didn't eat properly. I am guessing, but I would bet that most non-star players from back then wouldn't be able to cut it in today's league.
Then there is the size and quality of goalie equipment.
The fact that in the 1980s, the NHL was drawing from a much smaller talent pool, which, despite having less jobs available because of there being only 21 teams, means that today's league-average player is likely far superior to back then.
There is coaching, strategy, statistics - for both defense and goalies - that has drastically cut into scoring.
Consider this: the average save percentage in 1983-84 (and I'm quoting the Sportsnet article here) was .873. Where as today, you are out of a job if you can't post above .910.
There is video review, an incentive to win at all costs (which leads to stifling defense) and new ideas about how to play the game (more offensive D, less enforcers) all of which detract from the number of bad players in the league and make scoring harder.
Also, the average size of a player is way, way bigger than it used to be. There is less room on the ice to make plays and this also leads to lower scoring.
We essentially now watch indoor ice-soccer.
The NHL needs more scoring and I don't think it's debatable.
For starters, the main thing to do is allow video review to be a subjective judgement call. All or nothing doesn't work. Let the ref decide what he thinks is goalie interference, let it be different for each ref like a strike zone in baseball.
And don't allow it for offsides. Let the ref decide, Jesus, they've been doing it for 100 years with no problems. If they blow a call or two, so be it.
But the main thing they have to do is make the nets slightly bigger. They don't need to get crazy, but just make them a bit bigger to account for the fact that players shooting on Carey Price have a lot less room to score than players shooting on Grant Fuhr did.
Considering all the changes to the rule books in the last thirty years, the natural changes and the general natural progression of the game, comparing records between eras is already impossible without a massive amount of context.
If the NHL made it so that every goal that currently hit the post would now count, the league would be a lot more fun to watch and we'd see better hockey. Plus, more goals would probably lead to more coaches coaching offensive based strategies.
I can't see a down side here. It's time to make the change.