Wednesday Morning Fly By: Danny! Danny! Danny!

Petr Svoboda.

Peter Svboda! (Sp?)

Name another Flyer to wear #23 in the 99 season?

(Hint: Changed his # to 15 that year)

Choose your own faceoff opponent sounds hilarious. If it’s limited to forwards will we see teams that throw out three centers for crucial draws late in the game? That’d be interesting.

There is absolutely no reason to call icing during short handed situations. That would be a terrible rule. How can you kill a penalty with that rule? Terrible, terrible idea.

Face-off challenge jesus that is just stupid I want you. Not a good idea it is gimmicky especially if you can pick D-Men. You might as well just have the other team forfeit the draw if they are kicked out then that stupid rule. I don’t want refs having any more impact on the game.

Hybrid icing rule. Hybrid is a half ass compromise forcing the linesman to make a decision and will lead to tons and tons of inconsistency either it is no touch or touch nothing have assed. Leaving the linesman with a choice worked out real well with the famous no icing on a pass attempt rule that I am not even sure exists anymore or is just fat out ignored by the refs.

The OT rules are a joke. 2 on 2 Hockey for a point are you kidding me. 1st off you have to stop the OT action to switch from the 4 on 4 two the 3 on 3 and then again to the 2 on 2. Which is going to kill the flow of the game and seriously 4 on 4 is enough of a bastardization of the game 2 on 2 is total clown shoes. Next you each pull your goal in favor of the windmill and players shot from center ice or put in the superskill plate accuracy competition to determine the winner. I rather see each teams elects their tough guy and they go at it in a two man enter one man leaves judged fight for the gay Bettmen point, at least then we could justify Shelly’s salary.

2nd ref off the ice is also a joke off ice official to call penalties is probably the best of the rule changes. I still think the 2 refs system leads to much indecision who is going to call it me or you oh well if the penalty was so obvious the other guy would have called it so I will let it go type stuff. One man with all the control of penalties is best for consistency. Stuff behind the play will be missed but that is hockey.

Because we have to go through Getty and their archives don’t go back that far, the choices are limited. Each time I’ve wanted players from the 70s and 80s, they’re either not available or none existent.

So, we apologize to those over the age of 25 who are offended at how easy they are.

I haven’t been here so long! It feels like ages. What’d I miss???

All of those rules and not even an attempt at removing the stupid fucking trapezoid. Wonderful.

Although that OT idea is intriguing. Seeing these guys play 4v4 could be pretty entertaining, like a beefed up version of roller hockey. But 2v2? Meh. The whole thing is pretty weird, but it’s an interesting idea.

All these rules changes seem dumb. It is like the NHL wants to be like NFL or NBA or MLB it isn’t going to happen. It is like the Philadelphia thing people who have never been there think the people suck, fans suck and there is no changing their mind. That is the deal with hockey people just think it is boring cause someone said so who heard it from someone who said so. That is just a opinion.

My wife and I were discussing hockey OT rules a few months ago while watching a game. She likes the shootout, while I want to go back to the 5-min OT resulting in a tie (with no charity point for the OTL) that I grew up with. Of course, the ideal would be perpetual sudden death OT like in the playoffs, but the NHLPA would never agree to it.

Since we couldn’t agree on a past or current system, we came up with something entirely new:

It’s kind of loosely based on the college football overtime idea (also somewhat akin to extra innings in baseball), where each team takes turns with a scoring drive on a shortened field. We figured the hockey equivalent of that would be alternating powerplays. You give a 2-minute powerplay to each team and repeat until one team scores and the other doesn’t. Some of the finer details are still up for debate. Like the number of players, do you do 5-on-4? 4-on-3? 5-on-3? Do you change it for each round? If the team with the extra man scores, do you end the powerplay like on a minor, or continue for the full duration like a major? (I think you would end it like a minor.) What do you do if the shorthanded team scores? The one problem I see is that it could still take a long time given that last year’s PP% for the season ranged from 14-25%. So maybe that’s where you go to 5-on-3….

Your thoughts? Could this work? Would you enjoy watching it?