No game is ever perfect, and hockey seems to tinker with its rules more and more every year.
Everyone seems to have an idea of how to make the game they love just a little bit better.
Even the players, who sounded off about coaches’ challenges, offside reviews, icing and the shootout in interviews with the Star when they were asked what changes they would make if they had the power.
Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews, for example, would like to get rid of the offside review.
“It drives me nuts,” said Toews. “Let the refs do their job. If you miss a call by half an inch and you can still tell on a camera it’s offside somehow, is that really what made the difference? To me, the blue line is there so no one can hang out at the circle while the play is in the other zone.”
Vladimir Tarasenko of the St. Louis Blues would go even further, trying to find a way to wind back the clock and get rid of the idea that a coach can challenge the validity of a goal.
He’d rather live with a mistake than have the fun sucked out of the game.
“You score a goal, and you look at the ref and then they (the other team) still have a chance to call a challenge,” said Tarasenko. “Then you go to the bench, and go do the fist-pumps, and you sit down and — I’m not kidding, you’re looking at the ref. He’s facing their bench, they still can call the challenge.
“So when the ref turns to you, only then you recognize your goal will count.”
Tarasenko said any momentum a team feels it has after scoring a goal can be deflated just by the wait.
“They review it. It takes so long, and it’s 10 minutes, and totally kills the game,” said the Blues sniper.
“You’re in the zone for like a minute. You score a goal, and then it’s like, offside, but it was two minutes ago. It doesn’t make sense. Yes, it makes the (result) clear. But it kills the dynamics.”
This year, the rules were changed so that any goal can be challenged, but if the challenging team loses they’ll get a delay-of-game penalty. If they lose a second time in the same game, they’ll get two delay-of-game penalties.
The good news is there’s some progress on that front. So far, there have been 14 challenges, with 10 resulting in the call on the ice being overturned. That’s through the first 106 games, or challenges in 13.2 per cent of games. Last year, there were 279 challenges over the full 1,271 regular-season game schedule, or challenges in 22 per cent of games.
Then there’s the shootout. It’s fun for fans — no one leaves when the shootout is about to begin — but players can live without it.
“I was never really a fan of it,” said Vancouver Canucks captain Bo Horvat. “Losing in a shootout, it’s probably the worst feeling ever. I’d rather, you know, lose it going against your opponents and fighting for it. That would be the only thing I’d change.”
Since the introduction of 3-on-3 overtime in 2015-16 — replacing 4-on-4 overtime — the number of shootouts has declined. There were 289 games that required shootouts in 2009-10 — the high-water mark. Last year, only 87 games needed the shootout, the lowest number since the tie-break procedure was adopted in 2006-07.
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The Blues’ Ryan O’Reilly would love to introduce icing into power plays. A team killing a penalty can ice the puck without punishment but O’Reilly would love to see the team penalized — the whistle blown and no line change allowed, just like in 5-on-5 play.
“That would make the game more skilled,” said O’Reilly. “You’d want to have have skilled players out there so when you get the puck, you’ve got to make plays still. It would change it a bit and create more goals.”
Meanwhile, Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews had a couple of ideas.
“I would make the nets bigger,” he said.
- Killer B: Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock praised Canadian tennis star Bianca Andreescu, who dropped the ceremonial first puck on Saturday. “I know zero about tennis, but what I do know about is competition and competing and what I like about her is that she just seems to love it,” said Babcock. “When it’s on the line, she seems to bring it. The one time — I don’t know which match, or which tournament was when she was injured — she just kept finding a way to keep going. I love that stuff. She has good grit.”
- Ukrainian Meatball? Maple Leafs winger Dmytro Timashov is listed on NHL.com as the only active player from Ukraine in the NHL. Timashov, however, is Swedish. Though born in Ukraine, he was raised in Sweden when his Ukrainian mother married a Swede. He even playing for Sweden’s national junior team in 2015. “This is why you can’t determine a player’s nationality by birth,” tweeted Szymon Szemberg, the managing director, Alliance of European Hockey Clubs E.H.C. “In NHL’s nationality stats Timashov is listed as Ukrainian, although he is as Swedish as meatballs with lingonberry at IKEA.”
- Doughty’s rivals: Hockey Night in Canada doesn’t mind playing up the rivalry between L.A. Kings defenceman Drew Doughty and Calgary Flames winger Matthew Tkachuk. Doughty, however, told the broadcaster he has bigger rivals than Tkachuk, whom he’s faced only 10 times. “It’s just we play in the West and no one sees it,” said Doughty. “But I literally have one on every team. Joe Thornton on San Jose. On Anaheim, me and (Corey) Perry are great friends back home, but in the game we do not like each other. It’s part of my game. I need to have a rivalry with someone to have a good game. I feel I play better, so I choose to do that.”
- Winning feeling: Patrice Bergeron has both won the Stanley Cup (in 2011), and lost it (in 2013, 2019). He said there’s a wide range of emotions when he thinks back to his Cup runs. “Those are two different feelings,” said Bergeron. “Obviously, I’ll never forget the feelings I had winning the Cup and that’s what you want, you know you want to accomplish again. You want more of that.”
- Road warriors: The Minnesota Wild arguably had the toughest schedule to start the season, playing mostly on the road and mostly against teams that made the playoffs last year. Coach Bruce Boudreau was asked if there was any advantage to that. “The meal money’s really good,” he said. “But no, when you start out 13 of your first 18 on the road, it’s, it’s a tough, tough go. And then, they’re all playoff teams that we’re playing, too. So it’s tough, but it’s going to make you stronger, and you look at the positives of that. And I think if we come out of it okay, then I think we’ll be setting ourselves up for good second half.”
- Turning page: Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said there’s some consolation from having gotten to the Stanley Cup final last season. “There’s a lot of good memories from last year, a lot of good things to build on but we didn’t win. So we’re like 30 other teams were trying to get back there and win,” said Cassidy. “Our guys are good with that, they’ve been through it before they’ve been on both sides of it. A lot of our core guys, they’ve been good guys to lean on terms of preparation and with the attitude needs to be in the room. And that’s about it. It’s a new year, we got a few new players.”
- Winning formula: The Tampa Bay Lightning signed Pat Maroon as a free agent from St. Louis in the hopes he can bring some of his Stanley Cup swagger – and a physical element – to the Bolts. He says he’ll do his part. “Coming to a new team, the winning value of it is over,” said Maroon. “I won in St. Louis. I don’t want to come and talk about it with the Tampa Bay Lightning and rub it in their face. That’s not my job. My job is to come in here and try to lead by example, and actually talk about how we got there, what it took to get there. And what we need to do to get better as a hockey club. … The ultimate goal is to win the Stanley Cup. And then when you win one, you want to win more.”
