How to Simply Fix the NHL

The solution to professional hockey's problems isn't found in salary caps or luxury taxes or franchise players or "cost certainty." All of those machinations exist to keep a sinking ship afloat, and to ensure it'll miss the iceberg on ensuing voyages. They don't address the actual problem, which is that the NHL is a bamboo raft trying to navigate through a tsunami.

All the financial security in the world won't matter if there are no revenues to protect.

This isn't another screed claiming that the National Hockey League — or hockey in general — is an unpopular boondoggle that couldn't attract fans if they replaced all the players on the ice with the Swedish Bikini Team. (Although if Gary Bettman and the owners ever want to go the scab route, let that idea be a good jumping-off point, boys.)

In the majority of the cities in which they share arenas, NHL teams outdraw NBA teams. Minor league hockey thrives in such diverse locales as San Diego and Oklahoma City. There are pockets in the United States that treat hockey with the same tradition and reverence as any Texas town treats high-school football under Friday night's lights.

The popularity of hockey isn't the problem.

The popularity of NHL hockey is.

The Hockey-Hating American Media has been quasi-orgasmic in questioning where the "outrage" is when it comes to the lockout, as if fans should be rolling on Manhattan and Toronto in flaming zambonis, demanding that the league reopen its doors.

I believe most hockey fans are disappointed. Some are outright depressed. Most are frustrated by this tug-of-war between millionaires. But outrage? Nah. Outrage is reserved for when a referee fails to call a blatant penalty because there's less than two minutes left and the home team is up a goal. Outrage is seeing Bobby Holik getting paid like Bobby Orr should have been. Hockey fans know what pisses us off, and a bunch of suits trying to slice up a microscopic pie doesn't cut it.

Our feelings on the lockout don't reach the level of "outrage" for two reasons. First, we understand that the owners are finally attempting to put controls in place that will make the league financially solvent until it can become economically self-sufficient through television and advertising revenue. Yes, their overspending and irresponsibility is why we're in this predicament. But you can't fault a crackhead for being a crackhead if he's at least trying to put the pipe down for once.

This lockout is happening for good reason — unfortunately, it's about a decade too late.

The other reason we're not outraged is actually sort of depressing. It's that we all know, in our hockey hearts, that there is absolutely no reason to believe the leadership of the NHL can make the simple changes and difficult decisions necessary to make the league something die-hard fans can be passionate about again.

(Notice I didn't say "casual fans." There are not now, nor have there been nor will there be, "casual" hockey fans. Bettman's greatest folly was marketing the sport for these fictional fans. No one "casually" watches hockey. No one dips his or her toe into the frozen water; they cannonball through the ice. It's like that scene in Ocean's Eleven where Clooney pushes the plane ticket across the table to Matt Damon: "You're either in or you're out." Hockey fans get on the plane and help plan the heist — no one's parachuting into the vault at the Bellagio just for the grand finale.)

The owners could get complete cost certainty, the players could become one step up from indentured servitude, and the NHL would still be screwed.

So, for the 100,000th time in this column space, let's spell out some simple ways the NHL can fix its product, shall we?

Making the Game More Telegenic

Anyone catch that football game they played between the commercials last weekend? Did you see those new mini-cameras FOX cooked up, that were on field level and were about the size of a corn nibblet? They actually stuck these things on the end zone pylons. It was incredible.

If television networks put one iota of that kind of ingenuity into how to successfully transfer the speed and excitement of hockey to television, maybe the NHL would draw better ratings than that infomercial for the hand-held steam cleaner.

How many cameras are utilized in a garden-variety NHL broadcast? Two, maybe three? On ESPN or ABC, we also get the camera inside the net, and that one that dangles over the ice, making it look like the players are being chased by a Dalek. That one dangling over the ice conveys momentum but lacks cohesion. Every other camera does nothing to provide the viewer with a semblance of what hockey looks and feels like in the arena. Imagine watching an oil painting of the Giant slalom rather than the event itself at the Olympics — that's hockey on TV.

The NHL and NBC have clearly stated that they feel HDTV technology will make a difference in hockey on television, and they're right. But it has to go beyond that: both league and network have to completely give into the notion that televised sports are sports made for television. That means making a NHL game look like a NFL game: cameras everywhere, including those wicked cool rail cams that ESPN used during the Heritage Classic in Edmonton.

The NHL will never succeed on TV until it looks like the best video game you've never played.

Fix Overtime

Shootouts suck. And I really don't have the energy to explain why (again). Check the archives on SportsFanMagazine.com.

The NHL should play 10 minutes of four-on-four hockey in overtime. At least do it for a season, and then see how many ties you're left with. I think goals will be scored, and the fans will go home happy even if there is a tie because that 10 minutes of action will be worth the price of admission. And unlike with that bastardization of hockey called a "shootout," there were actually be (gasp!) defensemen involved in the play and (double gasp!) passing.

Fix the Schedule

You can successfully trace the demise of the NHL in mainstream popularity to one point in its recent history when three trends converged: over-expansion, the instigator rule, and the dramatic change in the NHL's playoff format, away from divisional play and into a conference format.

Over-expansion will take care of itself, either through contraction or relocation. The instigator should have been repealed yesterday, although it would mean suffering some "you're promoting violence!" slings and arrows from basketball writers like Michael Wilbon.

The playoff format, meanwhile, is a tougher nut to crack.

On the one hand, it has successfully kept more teams in the postseason hunt than in the original divisional format. But it's also created a homogenous regular season, one lacking the blood rivalries that made many non-playoff games just as intense as the postseason in the 1980s. Wouldn't animosity between division "rivals" like Carolina and Washington grow more intense if both teams were vying for the same playoff spot, instead of battling each other, the Islanders, Sabres, Penguins, Canadiens, and five other teams for the final three spots in the conference?

Two scheduling solutions that would make the NHL a better league immediately:

1. Back to divisional playoffs. Four divisions, two conferences, four playoff slots in each division. The division champ plays the No. 4 team, No. 2 plays No. 3, and the conference title is decided by the winners of each divisional playoff. Do I care that two divisions will have eight teams and two will have seven? No, I do not.

2. If you want to keep the three-division/two-conference format, then create a hybrid of the Major League Baseball and NFL schedules. Like football, have each division match up with another specific division in the opposite conference. The Atlantic Division plays the Pacific one year, and the Central the following year, and Northwest in the third year; and then the cycle repeats. To ensure that some traditional inter-conference rivalries and matchups continue, each team has a home-and-home series with four teams from the opposite conference that are not in the division they are scheduled to face.

Toronto, for example, would have Detroit, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver on the schedule, even if the Northeast was scheduled to face the Pacific in that season. The bottom line is that every team in the NHL will no longer play every other team in the NHL. It'll make those rare visits from opposite conference foes more meaningful; the games that are currently used for those inter-[conference opponents could be played against division rivals instead.

Fix the Game

The rules changes implemented on the AHL level — including tag-up off-sides, wider blue and red lines, and restrictions on where a goalie can play the puck — haven't resulted in a dramatic increase in scoring. According to the Buffalo News, scoring is only up 0.26 goals per game from last season's 5.11 goals per game average.

But if you think the problem in the NHL is goal scoring, then you might be a NBA fan at heart. The problem is offensive flow, and the AHL has recaptured it thanks in part to the rules changes. (The fact that a few NHLers have migrated down a level helps, as well.)

Lou Lamoriello once lamented the dawn of the TV timeout era in the NHL because it gave the players too much time to rest. The continuous action in the AHL leaves players feeling haggard, resulting in more offensive chances.

The NHL will adopt most, if not all, of these AHL rules changes, along with restrictions on goalie equipment. It's a good start, but doesn't address another more simple concern: the size of the ice. The players are bigger, the defensive systems are more complex; widening the ice would open the neutral zone.

(What about getting rid of the red line? I thought goal-hanging was something NHLers left on the pond.)

Widen the playing surface in every arena. Losing some seats in the lower level is worth putting a few more fannies in the seats upstairs.

There's a lot of passionate debate among hockey fans right now about what the new CBA will look like, if and when it's signed. Will there be a cap? Will there be a tax? Will there be a franchise player tag? Will there be a salary rollback? At what age will unrestricted free agency begin? Will the owners be allowed to reduce salaries through a new arbitration system?

Let me add a new question to the debate: does any of it really matter if the league's product is fundamentally flawed?

And do we, as fans, believe the same people who can't even agree on where to hold their meetings are the ones who can, in the end, make the NHL reach its potential, financially and competitively?

I sure as hell don't.

Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].