will we ever win?

Why the NHL sucks

I went to a hockey game last night and a baseball game broke out. I went up to Trenton to watch the Flyers play the Islanders in an exhibition game which the Flyers won 2-1 in a tedious and boring fashion. The reason it was tedious was because every 10 seconds the refs were calling a penalty, 26 total for the game, and play stopped. It was stoppage after stoppage and bad song after bad song on the arena sound system which only made things worse. The longest stretch of uninterrupted play was 6 minutes. 6 beautiful minutes stadium jam free. There was more skating to the penalty boxes than there was up and down the ice.

The NHL can't do anything right. In an attempt to increase speed and flow to the game by calling every obstruction, interference, hold, and hook that occurs no matter how minor, the NHL has made the game even more slow and awkward. Previously, at one extreme, everything was let go and now everything is being called to the other extreme. Why can't there be a middle ground? Imagine if the NFL refs called every hold or illegal contact that they see, that's what the NHL refs are doing. Two things will probably happen though. In the past the refs just stopped calling stuff after awhile (and that even happened to an extent last night) or the refs will continue to call everything and after 20 or so brutal games the players will have changed and adapted. But last night it seemed to me the refs called penalties when players were just fighting for the puck in good, legal one-on-one battles. And most of the penalties that were called the crowd missed completely because they were so minor or not even near the puck. The crowd did however indicate it's readiness for the regular season with lots of hearty boos. If you can stay awake, the NHL has videos to watch that explain all the new rules.

The other big rule changes didn't seem to have much of an effect on the game though. The allowing of 2 line passes didn't result in much. This was either because the players stunk and/or the defensemen just drop back to the blue line now instead of the red which isn't that big of a deal since the neutral zone is now smaller. The shootout is stupid and it will always be stupid.

Players that played good for the Flyers were Gagne, Richards, Sim, and Niittymaki. Richards had a surprising fight against a bigger dude and pounded him and was the main excitement of the game. Pitkanen was struggling again like he did at times during the regular season for the Phantoms. It's like he lacks confidence and hesitates and messes up because of it. Therien was just mediocre, not therienable, but I'm sure that will come as he will suffer the most because of the new rules since he's so slow. Anyway, the opening game is October 5th and it's going to be interesting how this all plays out.