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From: dpb@philabs.UUCP (Paul Benjamin)
Newsgroups: net.sport.hockey
Subject: NHL Rule changes
Message-ID: <361@philabs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Jun-85 15:04:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: philabs.361
Posted: Mon Jun 24 15:04:31 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Jun-85 01:10:23 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Philips Labs, Briarcliff Manor, NY
Lines: 55

*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR RULE CHANGE ***

> ken@alberta.UUCP (Ken Hruday) writes:
> The arguement is not compelling. This rule is an attempt to slow down
> the faster skating clubs. If the NHL feels obliged to play with the rules
> in order to "equalize" the teams, then they should do it in such a way
> as to promote better play from all teams rather than to penalize the
> better ones. Rule changes in the draft selection would accomplish this.

Bravo! People in every sport always seem to want to change the rules to
"equalize" things, - to punish the best clubs for being so good. The
same was done in the late 70's in the defensive secondary rules in the
NFL, to punish the Steelers (and to a lesser extent, the Raiders) for 
being so dominant. Parity seems to be the order of the day in all sports.
This can be fine for gate receipts, but it is a shame to see great teams
in any sport pulled back to the pack by rule changes instead of by
improvement on the part of other teams.

Some of the objections to the rule on coincidental minors center on
teams' deliberately trying to provoke offsetting minor penalties with a faster
team to get a fast skater off the ice, without suffering the disadvantage
of opening up the ice to a 4 on 4 situation. One additional rule change
which would restrict this ability, (and a change I feel would be good anyway)
would be to institute a penalty situation after a certain number of
penalties have been committed by a team in a period (or game), much as in
basketball. Say, for instance, that after four minor penalties have
been committed in a period, the duration of a minor is increased to
3 minutes, and after four more penalties, to 4 minutes, etc. This
would help to eliminate those absurd games in which extraordinary numbers
of penalties are assessed, since a team would pay a dear price, unless
the opposing team had the exact same number of penalties.

This also addresses the offsetting minor penalties problem, since a
hypothetical slow, pushy, penalty-prone team could not afford to
get offsetting penalties against a hypothetical speedy, finesse team.
The reason is that since it is penalty-prone anyway, the slow team
would be very likely to commit a penalty somewhere along the way, and
then the speedy team would actually be able to try to commit offsetting
penalties, and push the other into the 3-minute (4-minute ...) situation.

Although all the ramifications of such a rule change would be hard to
see in advance, one thing we can see is that it would make penalties
a real part of the strategy of the game, rather than just a gratuitous
act, which penalties unfortunately so often are. It seems clear that
the number of penalties would decrease. Also, hockey would not suffer
the problem with this rule that basketball has. Since basketball fouls
are punished by free-throws, the game is slowed horribly at the ends
of periods. The reverse would happen in hockey. Instead of periods
ending with each team throwing the puck into the other team's end, to
kill the period, we would see more power-play situations at the end
of periods.

However, there may be serious flaws with this idea which I have
overlooked. If so, I know I'll hear them loud and clear from
netland :-)