Jim Kelley

Jim Kelley writes regularly on the NHL for Sportsnet.ca and can be heard on Primetime Sports on the FAN590.

Once again, lack of scoring has left the NHL teetering on a public perception crisis south of the border.

Normally I see no reason for writing a column about me, but a recent mention of my name by Ron MacLean on Hockey Night in Canada prompts me to write a response.

The HN IC host mentioned he heard an argument I made on PrimeTime Sports with Bob McCown on the Fan 590 during which I stated that the 1987 Canada Cup Series between Canada and the then Soviet Union was the best hockey I ever saw.

He used that to point out that there was a great deal of hooking and holding in that series and ran a number of clips featuring Wayne Gretzky as a primary culprit. McLean made a strong point and one that I don't dispute: back then there was a lot of that stuff going on but there was still damn fine hockey being played. However, MacLean took it a step further and used that series to argue that hooking and holding crackdowns can sometime get in the way of great hockey because constant penalties not only makes the game an endless series of power plays, but it also robs the game of its beauty that is largely built on speed and flow.

It's a good point, but it's not mine.

My point is simple. That Canada-Russia series was the best hockey I ever saw because it involved the best players in the game playing for something that truly mattered to them. They were playing best on best for the right to be known as the best.

The winner of that series would be regarded as the best hockey team in the world and, by extension, the country that produces the best hockey talent in the world. Back then the players saw it that way, the fans saw it that way, and the hockey organizations from around the world saw it that way. That kind of intensity raised the stakes to the nth degree. Both teams played like they had everything to win and just as much to lose and, as a result, they brought forth the best hockey I ever saw.

My point of view was as simple as that. All MacLean or anyone else had to do was ask me.

Now understand, I have no problems with Ron MacLean, I think he is a first rate broadcaster, an exceptionally fine interviewer and a man who knows his hockey inside and out. I also believe he has a sense of fairness which makes his role in the first intermission of any Saturday night broadcasts one of the most difficult jobs in the industry. And to finish this little love fest, I appreciate the pub.

But that said; here's my point on the problems with the game today: the NHL is fast approaching another crisis regarding how its viewing public perceives its game. Maybe it doesn't matter as much in Canada where the debate will always be over the fine points of the game, but it matters a great deal in the U.S. where the league has just launched the NHL Network and is hoping that having its product on its own network will finally open the TV door that has been so consistently slammed in its corporate face.

To make that happen the league needs a product that people want to see and the recent hue and cry about the declining number of goals scored is at the heart of the matter.

Don't get me wrong, I like hitting, I enjoy a good goaltending battle and I keep a place in my heart for the occasional titanic defensive struggle. But by and large, I want to see the puck go in the net.

The NHL started to make that happen when it came back from its most recent lockout. It changed its rules and it opened up the ice. All parties - players, league officials, coaches and managers - were in agreement that speed and scoring, the lifeblood of the game, had been choked out of the product and that change was needed.

Change came about and it was almost universally hailed as a success, but in the past two seasons coaches and managers have adjusted and installed new and even more restrictive defensive-minded schemes.

The league had aided and abetted some of this by giving defencemen more latitude in using physical force in front of the net. It also never truly reined in the oversized equipment used by its uber-athletic goaltenders despite statements to the contrary.

The result is that scoring is falling and that the games are starting to get boring once again.

I don't expect to see a Canada-Russia-like contest on any Tuesday night in February; the stakes in a regular-season contest are seldom that high. Yet absent that kind of intensity, it's a given the league has to come up with something else.

Speed, through all three zones on the ice, needs to be enhanced. Defensive schemes that throw a blanket over offensive talent and creativity need to be cut back. Goaltenders need to be protected, but they also need to either have their equipment reduced in size or the nets they guard enlarged.

The NHL was on that path, but things have changed and it needs to act once again.

It needs to be vigilant in keeping offence and entertainment in the forefront and too much defence and stagnation at bay.

If it doesn't, it will fail to grow its version of the game and failure to grow the game, in the U.S. and around the world, is a ticket to economic failure for all the teams, even the six forever loved entities across Canada.

That's my point of view and you don't have to go to anywhere else to get it.