Speaking of "trying to attract the more 'casual' fan..."

I was at a bar here in Kaohsiung to watch a tape-delayed showing of the Oilers and the Kings game from a few nights (or mornings) ago, and I ended up sitting next to three guys who were obviously from Canada, and at least one was from TO, though they were all cheering for Edm for some reason (they really didn't seem familiar with any of the players beyond Smyth and Hemsky). Anyway, inbetween discussions about basketball (how do they let basketball fans into the country anyway?) they discussed the shootout. I'm a fairly reserved guy, but it was still all I could do to keep myself from jumping in and interrupting them.

I hate the shootout. I hate it in international hockey, I hate it when my team wins in it, I hate how it screws with the standings, and it's quite easily my least-favourite thing about the the NHL. Four on four overtime, yeah, whatever. Loser point in OT, .... stupid, but I can sorta see the motivation in terms of the "prisoners dilemma" game theory.

Here's why I hate it more anything else : Hockey is a team game, the team is far more important than the individual. Even the star D who plays 30 minutes a game is still only on the ice for 25% of the team's defense-available icetime. And how many of those are there in the league, three maybe? For the forward who plays 20 minutes a game, it's much much less, though I'm obviously not gonna do the math. It's a team game where the play of the team, over the whole 60 minutes, is far far more important the play of an individual. It's why the best team usually wins, and not the team with the biggest or best collection of individual talents. It's a major part of what makes hockey so intruiging, to me anyway. How important depth is, how important having all players playing the same system is. How, (to use an example that I'm obviously just pulling out of thin air and in no way refers to the current incarnation of any NHL team from northern Alberta) a team can be crippled offensively no matter how many supposed 20 goal scorers they have up front because their defense doesn't have a single guy who can reliably make a breakout pass.

But the shootout ignores all that. It removes the team element, which in my opinion is the most important part of what makes hockey, hockey. Instead of the game being about which set of 6 players on the ice work best together for 45 seconds, and which set of 20 players works best over 60 (or 65) minutes, it's about four players from each team. And they don't even have to do anything together, it's just down to the individual. Sure penalty shots are a part of hockey, but they're an incredibly rare part, to be used in the rare situations where an infraction has occured on a scoring chance so juicy that the refs decide the usual 2:00 is not enough punishment. They're a small, interesting side bit, they're not supposed to play a major role in 15-20% of the games.

One of the boneheads tonight used the "but it's the greatest display of raw skill in the game!" line. Which is just bullshit. It's skillful, sure, but I'm not sure how sending a guy in on the goalie to shoot unimpeded from six feet out of the crease is the greatest display of hockey skill. It's a great display of individual skill, perhaps, but hockey's not about individual skill.

And then there's the invariable "aww, but it's just the regular season, they'd never do it in the playoffs.... who cares about the regular season, they don't mean anything". Which was also used tonight. This one annoys me the most. I don't understand people who will support the shootout in the regular season, but can't stand the idea of it in the playoffs. As a matter of fact, the regular does matter, it decides who gets into the playoffs. I'm an Oilers fan, and I'll be the first guy to tell you that they beat the Canucks out of the last playoff spot last year because they had more shootout wins. Vancouver had more wins, but Edmonton had more shootout wins and losses. And then Edmonton came within a few bounces or a goaltenders knee of lifting the Cup last year. And with the salary cap reducing the great teams to good ones and lifting the poor teams to mediocre ones, there's alot more parity in the league which means alot more close races for the playoffs. I don't think it's too unlikely that someday we may see a Cup winner that made it to the playoffs on the strength of extra points form the shootout. So don't tell me the regular season means nothing. Have some consistency, either you support the shootout as a valid way of determining a winner or you don't. The regular season determines the playoffs, whether the game is in November or early April.

Not to mention, I get the feeling sometimes that the shootout in the regular season puts us on slipperly slope towards shootouts in the playoffs. Once people come to accept it as a legitimate part of hockey, it's alot easier to swallow (shove down throats?) in the playoffs. People will complain, and threaten to boycott, but we've heard that before. If the NHL sets an attendence record the year after returning from a full season lockout, can you really blame them for not taking the fans seriously? Besides, as is becoming more apparent, corporate support is what matters, a loss of 1000 fans a game can be made up quite easily with the sale of a few boxes.


Ok, so yeah, I watch shootouts when they're on. They're entertaining to be sure, sometimes as many goals as a 65 minute game packed into a minute and a half.
But it feels cheap. Scoring in hockey shouldn't be so easy. It's supposed to be a difficult game, in all areas, to play, coach, watch, and understand. It shouldn't be easy to score. Goals should always possible, always no more than a few seconds away from being possible, but maddeningly hard to come by. There needs to be flow, there needs to be plenty of shots, and fewer, but still lots, of scoring chances, and finally, maybe with only half a seconds warning, a goal. With penalty shots, you know as a general rule, give or take the shooter and goalie matchup, goals occur about 1/3rd of the time. There's drama, but it feels like it's forced. It's fake, it's opening all your christmas presents at once without actually looking at any of them. A goal should be the dessert, and maybe it's just my blood sugar problems, but too much dessert and no real food really messes with my system.


I personally was just fine with ties. Two teams played a close game, 65 minutes wasn't enough to determine a winner, why force the issue? But apparently they aren't acceptable, so some way of finding a winner must be found. I'll admit playing sudden death till a winner is found isn't really feasible in the regular season, unless they shorten the schedule to thirty games and play once a week.
So heres my novel idea to find a winner for every game. It's a gimmick, but it's less of one than the shootout is. If the problem with the shootout is that it's not part of a team game, and the problem with the team game is that those goaltenders keep getting in the way of the puck far, far too often, why not play overtime without them? Play four on four overtime, hell, if you want, play six skaters on six with the extra D-man back at the hashmarks to collect dump-ins. Instead of reducing the outcome to being dependent on 4 of the 20 players on the team and removing the "team play" concept entirely, my way you're still involving 18 of the 20 players (both goalies removed from the equation) and you're including vast majority of the team play concept.
And you'd always have a winner, games wouldn't last more than two minutes of overtime in my estimation. Hell, I'm fairly certain you could play sudden death overtime in that situation and be done the game before the regular five minute OT ended each and every time.
Goaltending may be the most important position in the game, but can you really tell me that goaltending is more important than having players who can conduct a good breakout play? Than a system that can beat the trap? Than players who can maintain control of the puck in the offensive zone when up by one with thirty seconds left on the clock? Than the coaches ability to match lines favourably and expoit a mismatch? Is it more important than all of these things (and many, many, many more) combined?

When I first thought of this (it came from remembering one of the suggested solutions to ending the longest OT game in NHL history in 1936, one of the suggestions was a coin flip, another was playing without goalies. I think I read it in one of the countless hockey history books for kids I read when I was 11-14, probably all by Brian McFarlane) it was just a sarcastic joke... then it was semi-serious, and now.... well, I'll defend it against the shootout any day.

Anyway, I know this is a topic that just about everyone has written about, and I'm about a year and a half late in getting my $0.02 in on this, but I was all riled up after listening to those morons during the game. And the guy arguing against the shootout didn't even do a half decent job.

Maybe I'm still scarred from the '94 and '98 Olympics, but....fuck... I really really hate the shootout. Enough to swear in a blog my mom might someday stumble across. Besides, it's gone my way too, see these past WJC's and the 05-06 Oilers.

And I know this is really really long, but when I post once every two weeks, this is what you get.

Harry Buttman

I get the feeling most of these posts will take place at 2:30am or later.

This is a continuation of something else I just wrote elsewhere, I figure I'll post it here so I can look back on it someday and see if I think "man, I was an idiot" ... much like I've been doing thus far with this blog.


Why I don't like Gary Bettman :

It's the man's job to try and grow revenues for the owners, he's the commissioner after all. So I can't really blame him for that. I don't really care about the NHL's revenues, or the value of franchises or the TV ratings and all that. I only start to care about them when those numbers (or lack thereof) start to affect (hold on, I'm gonna get pretentious/cheesy here) The Game.
I care about hockey in Canada, I care about how strong a cultural institution it is, and therefore, I don't like things that may diminish that. And like it or not, the NHL has a huge impact on hockey at all levels in Canada. In February 2005, how many times did you hear "they cancelled the hockey season!" as opposed to "they cancelled the NHL season!" and in October 2005, how many times did you hear "hockey's back!" as opposed to "the NHL is back!"? Exactly.

I know the NHL has gone chasing big revenues in the US in the past, in "The Game", Dryden mentions how cyclical it is, and how it'll happen again (writing this in 1980~, mind you) when people forget how the last time never really worked. But since 1993, the NHL has seen the loss of two Canadian clubs, and it doesn't look very likely that any of them will be coming back to their respective cities. I know there are still hockey fans in QC and Winnipeg, but I can't help but feel that there are kids there who aren't gonna be quite as big of hockey fans (or hockey fans at all) because they don't have the big club to cheer for. The AHL doesn't have quite the same draw. Hockey can still be strong with six teams in Canada, but not as strong as it'd be with eight teams.

There are other areas; Tom Benjamin had a post a while back about how minor hockey leagues in both the US and Canada had adopted the NHL's "new rules" on contact (I don't think there's a hockey phrase out that that annoys me more than "the new rules") and how it was driving the players crazy and really bothering alot of them. I'm not exactly involved in minor hockey this year, so I don't know how true that is, but it certainly wouldn't suprise me. For the most part, what the NHL does gets adopted by the CHL, and so on down the ranks.


I suppose it all comes down to this: The NHL is concerned with making the most amount of money possible for the owners, but that's not necessarily in my interests. If the NHL gives the next Canadian TV rights to TSN and CTV instead of the CBC, and CTV only airs one game on saturday nights and that one game is only the leafs... well how does that help me as an Oilers fan (presumably) not living in Edmonton? And if I dislike TV and don't care to spend $50 a month simply for a few extra hockey games and then don't get TSN, how many fewer hockey games will I be watching? CTV/TSN might give the NHL more money, but it doesn't improve my experience as a hockey fan, and it's certainly worse for those who only get over the air channels.
And IF (this is a big IF) the NHL goes out of it's way to block an American team from moving to Canada (as they may well have done with regards to the Pens) because a team in Canada doesn't fit with their plans for a huge TV contract..... well, you see where I'm going with that.

In the end, the NHL has every right to do what they want to make money. But what's good for the NHL may not be good for "The Game", and that's what I care about. I don't like how the NHL has seemingly pushed away or taken for granted its more diehard fans in their search for the casual fan dollars. A few weeks ago the NHL VP for Communications said something about the NHL having a strong sophomore season, which sounded like a very telling quote about the NHL's attitude to me. It may have been off the cuff, a joke, but it could also be a very strong hint about how the NHL feels about its past. Larry Brooks says more in that link.

And what of that salary cap? It's supposed to save the small market Canadian teams, right? (Well, Bill Daly actually said it was intended to increase franchise values, but...) Well what happens when the salary cap hits $55 Million (and the floor is $38M) and the Canadian dollar drops back down to $0.65 instead of $0.85US? And then 50 goal scorer Rob Schremp is a UFA to be and demanding $9 Million from the Oilers?

I tried to come up with a better way of explaining why I don't like the guy than the usual stuff you'll read on messageboards and the like, while trying to be fair to him at the same time. It's quite possible that he personally didn't decree that NHL teams should change their sweaters to something "sexier", but if he's the figurehead, then it's being done in his name. The sweater changes, by the way, seem like the perfect example of trying to fix what ain't broke, and it'll be alot easier for them to get it wrong than to get it right.


All I know is, I watched Bon Cop Bad Cop the other day (which is where Harry Buttman comes from), and I found myself rooting pretty hard for the bad guy, especially at the end.