dpb@philabs.UUCP (Paul Benjamin) (06/24/85)
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR RULE CHANGE *** > ken@alberta.UUCP (Ken Hruday) writes: > The arguement is not compelling. This rule is an attempt to slow down > the faster skating clubs. If the NHL feels obliged to play with the rules > in order to "equalize" the teams, then they should do it in such a way > as to promote better play from all teams rather than to penalize the > better ones. Rule changes in the draft selection would accomplish this. Bravo! People in every sport always seem to want to change the rules to "equalize" things, - to punish the best clubs for being so good. The same was done in the late 70's in the defensive secondary rules in the NFL, to punish the Steelers (and to a lesser extent, the Raiders) for being so dominant. Parity seems to be the order of the day in all sports. This can be fine for gate receipts, but it is a shame to see great teams in any sport pulled back to the pack by rule changes instead of by improvement on the part of other teams. Some of the objections to the rule on coincidental minors center on teams' deliberately trying to provoke offsetting minor penalties with a faster team to get a fast skater off the ice, without suffering the disadvantage of opening up the ice to a 4 on 4 situation. One additional rule change which would restrict this ability, (and a change I feel would be good anyway) would be to institute a penalty situation after a certain number of penalties have been committed by a team in a period (or game), much as in basketball. Say, for instance, that after four minor penalties have been committed in a period, the duration of a minor is increased to 3 minutes, and after four more penalties, to 4 minutes, etc. This would help to eliminate those absurd games in which extraordinary numbers of penalties are assessed, since a team would pay a dear price, unless the opposing team had the exact same number of penalties. This also addresses the offsetting minor penalties problem, since a hypothetical slow, pushy, penalty-prone team could not afford to get offsetting penalties against a hypothetical speedy, finesse team. The reason is that since it is penalty-prone anyway, the slow team would be very likely to commit a penalty somewhere along the way, and then the speedy team would actually be able to try to commit offsetting penalties, and push the other into the 3-minute (4-minute ...) situation. Although all the ramifications of such a rule change would be hard to see in advance, one thing we can see is that it would make penalties a real part of the strategy of the game, rather than just a gratuitous act, which penalties unfortunately so often are. It seems clear that the number of penalties would decrease. Also, hockey would not suffer the problem with this rule that basketball has. Since basketball fouls are punished by free-throws, the game is slowed horribly at the ends of periods. The reverse would happen in hockey. Instead of periods ending with each team throwing the puck into the other team's end, to kill the period, we would see more power-play situations at the end of periods. However, there may be serious flaws with this idea which I have overlooked. If so, I know I'll hear them loud and clear from netland :-)
rick@ucla-cs.UUCP (06/27/85)
Well, I've stayed as quiet on this one as I can (bozos@alberta start your flamethrowers :-)). In article <361@philabs.UUCP> dpb@philabs.UUCP (Paul Benjamin) writes: >> ken@alberta.UUCP (Ken Hruday) writes: >> The arguement is not compelling. This rule is an attempt to slow down >> the faster skating clubs. > >Bravo! People in every sport always seem to want to change the rules to >"equalize" things, - to punish the best clubs for being so good. ... This is hardly a new area. Rules have been changed constantly in hockey because of teams *abusing* the rules. They have also been changed because of teams exploiting the rules. Examples? In the mid-50's the Montreal Canadiens had such a potent power play that the rules were changed so that after a goal was scored the penalized player came back onto the ice. The Habs used to routinely score 2 or 3 goals on a power play. In the mid-70's the Philadelphia Flyers (aka Broad Street Bullies) were involved in some many bench clearing brawls that the "3rd man in" and "1st man off the bench" rules were introduced. In the early-80's the New York Islanders would change goalies (and get to warm up the new goalie) in order to get a 'timeout'. So, you see, rules are always introduced to hurt a good team (although it HAS been done) but, rather, to prevent abuse of the rules. There were many complaints from teams playing the Oilers in this year's playoffs that the Oiler players would deliberately try to take coincidental penalties to set up 4-on-4's. Oh, but you say that all the other player has to is ignore it? Try it sometime in the heat of a game, it isn't easy to turn the other cheek. >Some of the objections to the rule on coincidental minors center on >teams' deliberately trying to provoke offsetting minor penalties with a faster >team to get a fast skater off the ice, without suffering the disadvantage >of opening up the ice to a 4 on 4 situation. One additional rule change >which would restrict this ability, (and a change I feel would be good anyway) >would be to institute a penalty situation after a certain number of >penalties have been committed by a team in a period (or game), much as in >basketball... I sure hope no one takes this seriously. Escalating the length of penalites will skew games in favor of teams with good power plays. Also there would be *fewer* penalties called because referees do not like to influence the results of games - however, they *do* when they don't call penalties as much as when they do call them (the Islanders had such an awesome power play in the early 80's that referees wouldn't call as many penalties in the playoffs as they should). I sure fail to see why the Oiler fans are in such a huff over this. They are hardly the first team to have legislation changed because of them, and they won't be the last. And this is merely a return to an *old* rule, not the introduction of a new one! -- Rick Gillespie ARPANET: rick@ucla-locus.ARPA or (soon) rick@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU UUCP: ...!{cepu|ihnp4|sdcrdcf|ucbvax}!ucla-cs!rick SPUDNET: ...eye%rick@russet.spud