Who Peed in the Talent Pool: The Over-Expansion of the NHL

Over the past five years, if you sit down with hockey fans, you will hear many of them say that the game is not as good as it was in the eighties and nineties. There is always debate over why and how the game has changed. Not everyone will agree on why the game is different, but most people will agree that it is.

People will point out that the league’s hard stance on removing all the clutching and holding has opened the game back up, but it is still not as freewheeling as it was when Wayne Gretzky scored ninety-two goals in a season. The size of the goalie’s pads is often mentioned. If you look at a goalie from the eighties, he will look much smaller than today’s monsters with their oversized pads. Some people will point out the shift in coaching philosophies that has teams playing defense first. While none of these things are wrong, the one point you rarely hear anyone make is that the level of talent in the league is not the same.

I am not saying that the individual players are not as talented as players from twenty years ago. The teams are not as talented as a whole. From 1979 until 1991 there were twenty-one teams in the NHL. In 1991 the San Jose Sharks were added as the first expansion team since the National Hockey League merged with the World Hockey Association in 1979. After that, eight other expansion teams joined the NHL over the next nine years. This brought the total number of teams in the league to thirty. That is almost a forty-three percent increase in teams. It also means a nearly forty-three percent increase in the number of players in the league.

The NHL was already the top tier league in the world before the expansion. The best players came from hockey playing countries all over the world to be in the NHL. There are twenty-two players on a game roster for an NHL team. There are about two hundred players on current NHL rosters that would not have been in the league twenty years ago. I am not saying that the players in the league do not deserve to be there. They have all worked hard to get where they are, but the truth is, in the old twenty-one team league, many of them would not have made the cut.

Two hundred players work out to be roughly seven players per team. That is one forward line and two defense pairings or two forward lines and a goalie. There are several ways you can divide them up, but it still works out to be about a third of each team. Most teams today are successful if they have two talented lines and a fairly descent third line. Many of the third lines are considered “checking lines”. This means they are put out to try to shut down the opposing teams best players. If these players can chip in a goal, it’s a bonus. Many fourth line players only play a few minutes a game. They are often called “energy lines”. Their job is to go out and get the team and the crowd fired up. Sometimes it’s a big hit and other times it’s a fight, but many times these players will go more than a season without scoring a goal.

Before the expansion, some of the current first and second line players would have been on those third and fourth lines. Teams had more scoring depth because the talent went beyond the top two lines. If you take the top two lines from the nine expansion teams and spread just those players out that would add two top six forwards to each team and still leave some players left. There is not a general manager in the league that would not love to have that talent level.

The NHL Draft occurs every year around the end of June. There are currently seven rounds with each team having one pick per round. Some teams may have an extra compensatory pick for losing a restricted free agent, but that is an entirely different discussion. That means there are a minimum of 210 players drafted each year. In 1979, the draft consisted of six rounds with 21 picks per round. That is almost half the number of players drafted today. With double the number of players being drafted, you cannot help but see a drop off in the skill level of the players.

Now, take a minute to think about goaltending. There are nine goalies currently starting in the league that would have been back-ups before expansion. In a league where the goaltender can make or break a season this is huge. There might be four or five “elite” goalies in the league. After that, many of the remaining top twenty are pretty even. Beyond that you start to see the talent level drop off. Good goaltending hides mistakes the rest of the team might make. If you remove the bottom nine goalies from starting roles and increase the talent up front, the scoring might change very little but the game would be more exciting.

In the late nineties and early part of this decade, the game was slowed down by players holding and hooking as the skilled forwards made their way up ice. The players, the fans, and the league all noticed that the game was going down hill. The NHL lost a full season to a labor dispute in 2004-2005. During this time some players took it upon themselves to try to find ways to make the game better. They concluded that they could make minor rule changes and call for more strict enforcement of existing rules. As a result, after the lockout, the number of penalties being called was noticeably higher. The league took a zero tolerance stance on hooking, holding, and interference. This helped to open the game up some and lead to the end of some players careers because they could not keep up.

Even with the changes made after the lock out, the game is still not as free and open as it once was. The league has tried moving the nets both closer to and farther from the end boards. They have adjusted the distance between the blue lines to expand the neutral zone. They even removed a rule that disallowed a two line pass. This allows for faster movement and quicker transition from defense to offense. All of these things have helped to open the game back up, but not without causing new problems.

The crackdown on obstruction has lead to players moving faster through center ice. This has lead to bigger hits. Unfortunately it has also lead to bigger potential for injury. The players can no longer grab the puck carrier, but they can hit him. This, along with the instigator rule, has lead to less skilled players taking runs at the better players in the league. This tends to lead to knee and head injuries. It seems like a few times a month you hear a player is out with a concussion.

Injuries happen. It’s part of the game and should be expected. The problem arises when a star player is out for several weeks or months because a player that is lucky to play four minutes a night takes a run at him. Now, you have a team missing a star player. A true star player makes the players he plays with better, so teammate’s production suffers. Perhaps the team now loses some games they may have otherwise won. The fans miss out on the excitement that player brings to the ice. Watching games several times a week and the nightly highlights show, “NHL on the Fly”, every night on the NHL Network, you get to see just how often these cheap shots are taken.

Expansion has also hurt minor league hockey. The American Hockey League is the primary feeder league for the NHL. The league currently consists of twenty-nine teams. According to Hockeydb.com, there were only ten teams in 1979. That means almost every player for an AHL team would be on an NHL roster today. This trend flows down to all levels of minor league hockey. After all, if the top league is taking less skilled players, the minor league teams have to take what is left. Now the quality of hockey at every professional level suffers.

There is also the financial burden some teams place on the rest of the league. Several years ago the NHL introduced revenue sharing as a way to help small market teams get by. Many of these teams are in non-traditional hockey markets. Places like Phoenix, Atlanta, Florida and Carolina. Teams that make more money have to give money to teams who have less so they can afford to play better players. There is often talk on the internet of teams moving to more supportive markets, but would that help if the product is not as good as it should be? It would just make more sense to fold the teams that cannot survive and let the better players go to teams who can afford them. Since the salary cap is based on revenue, getting rid of teams who are losing money would in turn allow teams to spend more on better players.

On March 26, 2010 TSN.ca released the result of an anonymous poll, posed by ESPN Magazine, to fifty NHLers. Players were asked several questions such as: “who is the best player in the league,” “what team will win the Stanley Cup,” and “who is the smartest coach.” They were also asked if they thought the league should be contracted and thirty-eight percent believed it should. Only two other questions on the survey scored a higher percentage.

Over-expansion might have brought some revenue to the league in rights and expansion fees, but in the long run it has hurt the game. It’s time for the NHL to get it right and disband a few teams. This would be an enormous undertaking and they would have to work closely with the player’s union. In the end, it would help the remaining team and players. It would also allow hockey fans at every professional level to see a faster paced and better played product on the ice.

A Puckhead’s Point of View

Football, baseball, basketball and hockey are widely considered the four major sports in the United States. Football is the most popular. There are youth teams in most towns and pretty much every high school in America has a team. It has surpassed baseball as “America’s Pastime”.

Hockey ranks well behind football in both popularity and participation. There are several possible reasons for that. The primary reason is there are many more youth football programs then hockey programs. This allows kids to be involved with football at an early age. Sunday afternoon football games are a standard in many households, while not nearly as families sit down and watch hockey games. People have a better understanding of the rules of football because they are a little easier to follow, but there are many aspects of hockey that are better than football.

Until the mid-1990’s, most towns across America had a football field, but finding a place, other than an empty parking lot, to play hockey was next to impossible. Trying to find an ice rink was more than a challenge in most of the country. In the last twenty years more roller hockey rinks have been built by towns, and ice rinks have been built in many towns where there were none before, including the southern U.S.

There is also a greater expense to play hockey. Most of the equipment used for football is owned by the league or team and is reused season after season. The fields are usually owned by towns or schools and funded and maintained through tax dollars and concession sales. Hockey equipment is generally the responsibility of the player. They buy their own pads, sticks, and skates. If you are playing roller hockey, some towns have rinks. Many rinks are shared with other towns to distribute the cost. Ice rinks are usually privately owned and you have to pay for ice time.

Because there are so few rinks, teams compete for ice time. This means some teams my have games or practices as early as 5 am. If you consider the drive time and the time to get all of your gear on this could mean getting up by 3:30 am. Most football practices are after school and games are on Friday evenings or on the weekend. It fits well into most people’s schedule.

More kids watch football with their families than hockey. Football is mostly played on Sunday afternoons and, children, parents, and sometimes even grandparents will all get together and watch. Many hockey games are played on weeknights and are over after children’s bed times. There are huge parties thrown for the Super Bowl. The Stanley Cup Finals are a least four games and could be as many as seven. That makes it hard to throw a party unless it goes to a seventh game.

It is easier to follow the play on television while watching football. It is a slower moving game with more time spent waiting for something to happen. You can see replays as soon as the play is over. Football always translated much better on television than hockey did, but now, as HDTV becomes more popular, hockey looks much better.

For years people complained about not being able to see the puck, but now HDTV has not only made that easier, but also allows you to see more of the ice surface. This all allows you to follow the play better. Hockey is a fast paced sport without many stoppages. Players come out for a shift and change without stopping play. This does not leave a lot of time for replays. It also does not leave much time for commercials. Networks are allowed only three commercial breaks per period and those are regulated as to when during the period. There are no “TV time outs” during overtime.

Most people understand the rules of football. They see it from a young age and the rules are fairly simple and straight forward. Hockey has a lot of rules that can even cause confusion with professional players from time to time. It doesn’t help that hockey has somewhat different rules in other countries, while football is an American sport. Tournaments run by the International Ice Hockey Federation, or IIHF, have slightly different rules than National Hockey League, or NHL. This can lead to confusion for the casual sports fan.

A football season is sixteen games and up to four playoff games in a little over four months. So if the average fan watches every game their team plays, and the team makes it to the Super Bowl, they have made time to watch on twenty days. A hockey season is eighty-two games and up to twenty-eight playoff games. A team could play a hundred games in just under nine months. There is much more of a commitment from a fan to watch every game. A DVR can be a very useful item for a hockey fan.

Even thought there is more of a commitment, it is worth the extra effort. The high pace of play, speed of the players and the level of contact is all greater than in football. There are no breaks after each play. Players change on the fly. This means the play keeps going while the teams change out the players. Football teams change the personnel on the field in-between plays.

If you like football because it is a contact sport, then you will love hockey. These guys are traveling twice the speed of football player when they collide. Whether it’s a hit in the open ice or a big collision along the boards, hockey players dish out the best hits of any sport. It’s like being in ten or fifteen car accidents in a night.

If you fight in football you are ejected from the game and could face suspension or fines from the league. The NHL and many other hockey leagues allow fighting. There is no fighting in tournaments run by the IIHF such as the Olympics. Some people would like to remove the fighting from the NHL, but it is part of the game. Players know that they have to answer for indiscretions. This helps to keep the players safe and serves to protect star players from being pummeled.

Fighting is also good for the fans. There are two things that get people out of their seats during a hockey game: goals and fights. Most fans enjoy the fights and it can help get the crowd into a game. Fights have also been know to swing the momentum of a game. There are people that do not like the fighting, but there is plenty of other action for them.

When you are playing football one person has the ball and everyone on the field is paying attention to that one person. You are either blocking or trying to tackle the ball carrier. Hockey requires you to pay attention to every player. There can be a pass at anytime. There is no out of bounds. The puck is always live and you never know where it could bounce. If you lose your man or the puck you can easily cost your team a goal.

That constant motion combines with the speed and grace of many of the skaters to create amazing high speed action that cannot help but get your adrenaline pumping. Teams get chance after chance to score. Fans are brought to the edge of their seat and you never know if it will be a great goal or a huge save. Football does not offer as number of scoring opportunities as hockey, and you can usually tell when someone is about to score. You get that excitement with hockey several times a week.

Not only do hockey player deal with a much more grueling schedule, but they also play through injuries that would cause most professional athletes to miss weeks. Ian Laperriere, of the Philadelphia Flyers, was hit in the face with a puck. He lost seven teeth and required nearly 100 stitches. He returned to play later in the same game. Players have played with broken hands, broken feet, separated shoulders, and many other injuries. You never hear that a hockey player misses a game for something that could be called “turf toe”.

Football has players with more flash and pizzazz. There are plenty of players like Terrell Owens or Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson in the NFL. They are always in the spotlight and if they are not they will do whatever it takes to get back in it. Hockey players, with very few exceptions, are very low key. Usually during interview, they will give credit to a teammate opposed to accepting praise. Alexander Ovechkin is the flashiest player the NHL has ever seen.

To go along with the low key style, hockey players are, for the most part, more personable. They will always take the time to sign autographs and acknowledge the fans. Teams will sometimes skate out to center ice and salute the fans after a game. You never see a football team come out on the field and do anything like that when the game is over. Hockey players understand how big of a role the fans play in their sport. Football sees the crowd as noise.

Hockey fans are the most loyal, dedicated fans in all sports. They love their team and they love their sport. It does take a little effort to understand and follow the game, but so does anything worth doing. Once you understand the game and its rules you’ll be hooked. It’s definitely worth the time.

Try watching a game with someone who is a fan and ask questions. If you get the chance go to a game, even if it is a minor league or college game, take it. Hockey is more fun live. You will have a good time and it will cost you less than half the price of a football game. Given a little time you could become a puckhead too.