Hockey Face Off

Indy Vets Drop the Gloves Over the NHL's rule changes

The Rebuttal: Out from the trenches

BY Jason Ng

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Contrary to what Mr. Hu (see right) has just asserted, the new NHL will be a better, more streamlined, and more exciting product. With the new changes enacted by the Rules Committee for the 2005-6 season, the unregulated thuggery that hindered creative play—leading to record-low attendance and financial ruin for many teams—will give way to a cleaner, more athletic-driven competitions. Hockey will no longer be just a battle of wills, but it will also reinstate speed and skill, two virtues sorely lacking from the league in recent years. It will be a return to the original, pure product that was so glamorous in hockey's modern heyday in the 70s and 80s—a time before hooking, grabbing, and interference ruined creativity in hockey and unnecessarily injured many players in the mid to late 90s and threatened to undermine the league altogether during last year's lockout.

Though the direct cause of last year's lockout may be disagreement over revenue-sharing between owners and players and an attempt to cap salaries, these financial issues stem from an obvious fact: each year fewer people go to the rink to watch an NHL hockey game. Hell, falling attendance even plagued my home team, the New Jersey Devils, one of hockey's dynasties during this ugly time in hockey history. With three championships during the 90s and 00s, they still played to less-than-capacity crowds during playoff games and their post-championship parades were held in the stadium's parking lot. Even in a state with nothing to cheer about in sports after the post-Drazen (dead) and post-Derrick Coleman (fat and effectively dead) era, the Devils were second-class sports stars. The only people who cared about them during this period were Martin Brodeur's (former) hot wife and apparently my opposition, Chris Hu.

Traps for the proletariat

So why are the Devils ignored by all? Four words: the neutral zone trap. This defensive system, despite what my opponent might say about it, is fascist. Mao, especially during his Cultural Revolution phase, would have loved the neutral-zone trap. The NZT (it irritates me to even write out the words) clogs the area between the blue lines, neutralizing star players and allowing less talented teams to slow down the game. This effectively turns a game into a form of trench warfare, one that rewards mindless conformity to a party line and dissuades any form of intellectual curiosity on the ice. And while trench warfare may appeal to certain people who purport to be fans of physical, blue-collar play and system-oriented hockey, the NZT is in actuality a replay of World War I on ice, and I think we can all agree that World War I is the worst war in history to put on ice. The Civil War had nighttime raids mixed in with honorable frontal assaults. The Peloponnesian War had inherent drama. Even the Vietnam War had its moments (guerilla warfare, surprise attacks, cultural miscommunications, napalm). World War I, though, was a blight upon humankind that no country celebrates. It is the same with the NZT. Watching people freeze their asses off in mud ditches for hours, then having to watch them run out of the ditch, yell and scream for about thirty seconds, get shot down mindlessly without any goal scoring, and then having to watch more ass freezing is not entertaining. And neither was the NHL of the mid 90s and 00s.

And if Chris Hu (I bet he enjoys watching trench warfare footage, that sadist) dares to compare the new NHL rules to the Patriot Act, I would point him to another historical precedent: the Constitution. When the makers of America realized that the country was collapsing under the incompetence of a previous set of rules, they had the foresight to create a better government and offered the fan-friendly Bill of Rights to dissatisfied citizens who threatened never to support the sport again. Yes, a vote against the new NHL rules changes is simply unpatriotic.

I'm not engaging with you right now

There is an important parallel in the evolution of basketball. The transformation of basketball from a plodding sport to one of above-the-rim action came about because of an influx in athletic players to the league. The fast break, the slam dunk, perfect spacing on transition offense—this is why people go to see basketball. Hockey never lacked in talent; the previous rules simply constrained that talent. Now with two line passes and the allowing of tag-up offside, those fast breaking opportunities will present themselves once more. These rules already exist in NCAA hockey and World Hockey games—games that even players admit are better flowing and more fun to play in.

For a neat distillation of what the majority of fans want from hockey, look no further than perhaps the best hockey video game of all time: the simply-titled Ice Hockey for NES, issued in 1988 to acclaim from the international community. The game featured no offsides, two line passes, a relatively stationary goalie whose skills revolved around blocking shots (rather than being an untouchable jumbo jet defenseman on ice), and a wide-open, free-flowing environment that rewarded movement and accurate passing. Make no bones about it, I don't want anonymous video game characters on my NHL team any time soon, but in the '90s there were times I would have rather watched people play Ice Hockey —a video game where a two goal deficit in the first period isn't an automatic loss —than sit through 60 minutes of dump-and-chase, neutral-zone groping.

JASON NG B'06 apologizes for the following: the neutral-zone trap, James McGreevey, Jersey Girl, Zach Braff, the smell outside Jersey City, and the New Jersey Coalition.

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