Domination: LGH
Trucking: ESPN
An audience of one: PD
A house of learned Doctors: Vine
Legend: SN
Farewell Captain: CBC
These go to 11: NHL
and never come back: PD
So much for that LTIR: LGH
Probably in front of the 17th pick of the 2009: CSN AP
Notes from Rock Vegas: TMI
Farewell Brave Lion: HockeeNight
The Pee-Wee team in Garden River is insulted: TSN
This is what happens when you build a rink in the Everglades: CBS
and I don’t present a problem to an unlimited lobster dinner: SN AP
Rapid Overreaction: NHL
Damn Real: HockeeNight
Crow: LGH
Kaner: CST
If the shoe fits: Chicago Tribune
Comcast is allowed to get away with it: SN
Yes it is: ESPN
Depart a little from your questions to day and Hawks specific stuff, and go over some rules changes were going to see this season, and some of them might have more effect than you think.
The one I think might go a little under the radar here is that no longer will faceoffs move out of the offensive zone after a shot ends up in the crowd. Even if the shot is fired off the glass and into the crowd, or off the post, or even deflected by a teammate, the ensuing draw is going to stay in the attacking zone.
This will result in more offensive zone draws, which you’d think in theory would lead to more goals. I don’t know that it will. But I do think it’ll make some difference that a defensive team is basically not going to get a “free out” any more, and to exit their zone they’re going to have to get it out themselves. Watch this one closely.
Depart a little from your questions to day and Hawks specific stuff, and go over some rules changes were going to see this season, and some of them might have more effect than you think.
The one I think might go a little under the radar here is that no longer will faceoffs move out of the offensive zone after a shot ends up in the crowd. Even if the shot is fired off the glass and into the crowd, or off the post, or even deflected by a teammate, the ensuing draw is going to stay in the attacking zone.
This will result in more offensive zone draws, which you’d think in theory would lead to more goals. I don’t know that it will. But I do think it’ll make some difference that a defensive team is basically not going to get a “free out” any more, and to exit their zone they’re going to have to get it out themselves. Watch this one closely.
These days, I’m basically piggy-backing off the better hockey writers around because it’s late August and I can’t be bothered to think of anything myself. That will change next week when the calendar flips to September and we can really start to preview the upcoming season. It doesn’t feel like the season is about to start until the NFL starts, at least to me. But nothing gets you ready for the start of hockey season like Kaner in a Bears jersey, right?
So today, it’s basically a reaction to Down Goes Brown’s study of why scoring was so batshit crazy in the 80’s and then by the mid-90’s had completely arrested. Sean provides a multitude of reasons, from the difference in goalies, expansion, rules-relaxations, defensive systems that became successful, and all of these are correct in their own way.
That’s not really why I’m here today though, as I’d more like to look at whether or not there needs to be a clamoring for something of a return to those free-scoring ways.
By now you’ve seen the report from Tony Gallagher in The Province about NHL expansion to Vegas being “a done deal” and that by 2017 Seattle, Quebec, and a second Toronto team will have joined the league.
Let’s pull this rig over to the soft shoulder. As Wyshynski pointed out on Puck Daddy (and everything he writes from now on I’m calling “Mooney avoidance”), one of the reasons this is getting such play is it’s the end of August. We couldn’t be farther from the free agent signing extravaganza, and training camp is still a blip on the ever stretching horizon. We need something to talk about… or at least something that isn’t Baez or Soler-related (sorry Sox fans, I just can’t contain it).
