Five years after all the rule changes, the NHL is thriving on the ice.
Some people greeted 'the new NHL' with plenty of skepticism. It will take hitting out of the game, they insisted.
As we prepare for our fifth year of play with reduced obstruction, I think it is safe to say the NHL hit a home run when it decided to change the way the game is played. No longer do third- and fourth-liners have as much of a role in the outcome of games as the stars.
Can you imagine the obstacles Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin would have faced if the game had remained the same? Both players would have still become stars -- they would have found a way to excel -- but it is distinctly possible neither would have put up the impressive numbers they have had they not been able to show off their extraordinary skills without some big galoot hanging all over them as they tried to negotiate their way through the neutral zone.
I covered the 2003-04 Stanley Cup final between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Calgary Flames, the last championship series before the game was changed, and believe me, as cool as it was to have the hard-fought final go seven games, the play was downright awful.
I recall the Lightning's Vinny Lecavalier telling me time and time again, "I can't do the things I like to do out there because of all the clutching and grabbing," - and his team won!
There were growing pains when the league clamped down on obstruction, to be sure, but slowly over the past few seasons the NHL has found a comfort level. When the crackdown was first announced, there was a steady parade to the penalty box. It was frustrating, but it was also necessary. Players had to learn they simply could not hook and hold as a way of keeping an opponent in check and get away with it. They had to move their feet.
I spoke with Brendan Shanahan recently -- it was Shanahan, you'll recall, who gathered some of the top hockey minds in the game during the lockout to talk about the state of the game -- and he said a change was necessary. Shanahan feels opening the game up may have actually cut a year or two off his career, but it was necessary nonetheless.
For Shanahan, who now works in the NHL's head office, the wakeup call came in 2004 when three of the game's best defencemen of all-time -- Ray Bourque, Paul Coffey and Larry Murphy -- were being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
"I remember listening to those guys talk to the media and they were all saying the game isn't as much fun to play as it used to be," Shanahan said.
The reason for that was simple: cheating was suffocating skill. The neutral zone trap, which emphasized defence and sucked the life out of the game, ruled the day. One of the reasons I liked watching the Lightning play, and was glad it won the Cup, was because its coach John Tortorella didn't play the trap. Tampa Bay relied on its stars, the likes of Lecavalier, Martin St. Louis and Brad Richards, to lead the way.
As for hitting, is there anybody out there still making the claim that the physicality has been taken out of the game? It was never the league's intention to take hitting out of the game. In fact, you could make the case that since defencemen have been unable to hold up charging attackers by hooking them, there's more hard hitting than ever -- to the point where defencemen chasing down loose pucks in their zone are often in danger of being plastered into the backboards.
We now see lead changes in games. Prior to the crackdown, if a team went up by a goal midway through the second period, you could pretty much switch channels to reruns of Matlock knowing that lead was safe.
Some teams have changed the way they build their teams in the new game. The Detroit Red Wings, for instance, put a lot of emphasis on speed and skill on their third and fourth lines. Not that they didn't have grit, too, with the likes of Darren McCarty, Kris Draper and Kirk Maltby, but they didn't feel it necessary to carry a goon who basically just took up space on the bench and couldn't play in the playoffs.
Had the game not changed, I wonder what kind of success a pipsqueak like Patrick Kane would have enjoyed? As it is, the 5-foot-10, 175-pounder was able to win the Calder Trophy as the league's top rookie and two years later score the goal that brought the Stanley Cup back to Chicago for the first time since 1960-61.
All in all, you have to like the direction this game is headed. It's not perfect, but it certainly is better.
