To be exact, I’m showing 69.6% of goals so far this year have been scored from 30 feet in.  If you strip out empty-netters, that number would pop slightly over 70%.

So who says we can’t make goalie equipment smaller?  Leg pads in particular seem overly tall and wide, certainly more than is needed to merely protect the player.

Posted by The Forechecker from Nolensville, TN on 11/16/07 at 09:30 AM ET

Typical: team has impotent offense and they start crying for bigger nets and smaller goalies. This from the guy who let both Briere and Drury. I’m not buying it.
If you want to open the game up, and I’d like to see it regain some flow, make the rinks bigger. Split the difference between NHL and International rinks. But this smaller goalies/bigger nets argument is stale, especially coming from Regier.

Posted by wings fan in Denver from 'dique-land on 11/16/07 at 09:53 AM ET

That’s a good idea… let’s make the ice bigger.  Maybe to international standards.  The problem is, the players will probably adapt to that after couple years and then goal-scoring will be down again and the lack-of-scoring whiners will be back again.  I’m getting sick of this low goals scored thing already.  Are we comparing our points scored to football games or basketball games?  Just because we’re not scoring 20 goals a game doesn’t mean the game isn’t exciting.  I love those goalie saves and shot blocks.  And of course, this story comes from the guy who let go two of his top scorers last year.  Let them play the game and stop whining about lack of scoring already!

Posted by Matt Fry from Winnipeg on 11/16/07 at 10:42 AM ET

Ruff does bring up a good point.

If the league makes defending more difficult, but does not make defending any less important, then I don’t know why we’d be surprised to see teams put more of their effort into defending.

Then he of course blows it by suggesting that the answer is to make defending more difficult.

I’ll say it again and again: you could actually reward goal-scoring, but who needs a logical answer like that?

Posted by Earl Sleek from Los Angeles, CA on 11/16/07 at 11:14 AM ET

The only way offense will predominate is if offense plays more of a part in winning games and championships than defense does.

As long as defense wins games, of course it will predominate.

Maybe if three points are awarded for a win and nothing for a loss, one point each for a tie, it might force coaches to allow teams to open up a bit in a game.  It would mean the difference between gaining three points on a divisional rival by beating them in the closing moments, or playing it safe and leaving with a tie so no ground is gained.

Rules can be tinkered with until the proverbial cows come home to roost, but if the mindset is always the same then the same “issues” will keep showing up.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 11/16/07 at 11:26 AM ET

One...the rinks won’t get any larger.  Forget it.  The arenas can’t accomodate larger ice surfaces, and even if they did, you’d be losing valuable seats at ice level.  Plus, if you make the rink larger, there’s less open ice hitting because there’s more room to skate around.  Who wants to see a less physical hockey game?

Two...the person who wrote that goalie pads need to get smaller clearly has never played goal.  With all these composite sticks, even schmucks at the beer league level now shoot 10 mph faster than they ever did.  And no, we’re not going back to the days of using wood stick (Sherwood has just announced they are going to stop wood stick production).  Plus, even when goalie equipment was decreased the first time, “goals per game” averages at virutally every level hardly budged.  That’s because goalies adapted.  Plus, smaller equipment makes goalies even faster and more agile.  So again, smaller equipment is not the answer.

Three...if you make the net larger, you have to amend the record books.  In otherwords, you fundamentally change the game of hockey by making the nets wider.  That makes about as much sense as making the puck smaller (and try getting TV execs to carry the games if you have to tell them NO ONE CAN SEE THE PUCK...good luck with that one).

No, there’s only one small change that needs to be made - invert the post so that they direct inward.  How many times do you watch a game, the shot beats the goalie clean, but rings off the post?  A TON.  Now if you invert the post inward, those same shots are now goals.  You don’t have to modify the equipment and you still keep the nets 6-feet by 4-feet.  Even Scotty Bowman has endorsed this idea.

But this is Bettman’s league, where simple ideas that work never seem to materialize.

Posted by Goalie on 11/16/07 at 11:30 AM ET

I don’t see the problem with larger nets with respect to the record books.  There isn’t an asterisk for numbers in the composit stick era, or the 30-teams era.  Baseball fundamentally changed the game by lowering the mound.

I think that fans are plenty capable of looking at numbers in the context of the game as it existed at the time the numbers were acquired, whether talent was diluted or there was a lot of travel for this team or this guy never got recognition because his linemates were slugs and depressed his own stats.

I agree on the larger rinks (players will adjust) and the goalie equipment (players will adjust).

I also like the idea of changing the color of the nets, making the posts gray and the netting itself red, to provide a better visual cue for the shooter (as someone mentioned here a few weeks/months ago).

But no matter what changes are made, if the defense-first mindset is still prevalent, then the defense-first game will still predominate.

I’ll say it again and again: you could actually reward goal-scoring, but who needs a logical answer like that?

Earl:  Are you thinking of having a team’s goal differential play into the standings somehow?  I mean as more than a tie-breaker?

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 11/16/07 at 12:23 PM ET

Wings fan...Larry Quinn has been talking about bigger and differently-shaped nets for over two years now.  Whatever you think of the idea, it’s not coming from the Sabres current situation.

Posted by KevinP on 11/16/07 at 12:34 PM ET

Earl:  Are you thinking of having a team’s goal differential play into the standings somehow?  I mean as more than a tie-breaker?

Well, if the aim is to generate more goals and more chances, then I think this seems to be the best solution.  I haven’t really nailed down anything specific, but what if the highest-scoring team in the league were to get home ice throughout the playoffs?

There’s plenty of options to think about--seeding according to GF, or even reserving the playoffs for the top 16 scoring teams.  There’s certainly going to be drawbacks, but if it becomes in the coach’s best interest to generate goals, then I think all the rule changes and net changes and goalie changes and uniform changes won’t really matter--teams will play differently in order to generate offense, which seems to be the intent of these non-functioning changes anyways.

I say a little more on the subject here, but it’s still at this point just food for thought.

Posted by Earl Sleek from Los Angeles, CA on 11/16/07 at 12:49 PM ET

...seeding according to GF, or even reserving the playoffs for the top 16 scoring teams.

Whirrrrrrr!

That would be Jacques Lemaire spinning in his grave...if he were dead. 

It would certainly be a way to change the coaching mindset, which is the only way to be at all effective, I would think.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 11/16/07 at 01:00 PM ET