The NHL decided to go retro this year. That’s right. It’s not so much that they instituted new rules; rather they went back to some old ones. The hoped for result has happened–scoring is up 24% from 2003-04.

Is the game more exciting? It seems to be. Are goaltenders and defensemen at a greater disadvantage than they were the last time the league produced a season of hockey? Definitely. The game has opened up for numerous reasons. The prohibition of the two-line pass is gone and that has opened up more chances for exciting playmaking. Now a defenseman who is still in his own zone can now shoot a pass to a winger breaking across the red line who catches it and continues over the blue line, shooting the puck on net. In past seasons that winger would have been whistled for connecting with a two-line pass and the play would have been dead.

For off sides there’s the “tag-up rule”, which allows offensive players who have preceded the puck into the attack zone to tag-up or touch the blue line and continue with play. Before, if a player were off sides the play would be stopped immediately. The new tag up rule has meant fewer whistles stopping the flow of the game.

When players are allowed to continue a play, as they are with these rules, there’s the chance for more shots and more goals. The NHL has noted that the number of shots on goal is also up.

One decision that has opened up the game but initially also slowed it down relates to defensive play, specifically what a defenseman can and can’t do. Prior to the start of the season officials were told by the league to pay special attention to interference, holding, hooking–any obstructive play. Especially at the start of the season there seemed to be an almost constant din of whistles, but as teams adjusted to the tighter calls, defensemen started relying more on stick work and there have been fewer whistles.

Of course with more calls against defensemen the number of power plays, which open up play even more, rose, thus gives teams a better shot–literally and figuratively–at scoring. Some players, former players, and commentators have been extremely vocal about this change. They feel it’s almost as if the defense has to ask permission before it asserts itself.

The fact is that “goon” defenseman just won’t cut it in the league anymore. In order to be effective at stopping the offense, players now have to utilize finer skills such as poke checking.

Another rule instituted to dissuade obstruction of play states that anyone instigating a fight in the final five minutes of a game will receive a game misconduct and a one-game suspension. This rule enforces the desire of the league to keep play unhampered and the game moving.

Then there’s the incredible shrinking goaltender, who is now 11% smaller. Has truncating the net-minder’s equipment really had much effect? Overall the bulk of the goalie’s gear has been reduced by 11% and sweaters and pants are also less bulky. Pads have been reduced by an inch and gloves and blockers aren’t as large. When you think about it logically such a reduction probably hasn’t had much of an influence on the rise in scoring.

Consider the fact that NHL goaltenders are amazing athletes capable of going to the right, making a pad save and then rushing to the other side of the net to stop a wrap around. They’ll do the butterfly and immediately be back on their skates, ready for the rebound. They possess extraordinary reflexes, having to wait till the last millisecond before they react to a shot. If anything, the reduction of bulk may have made these denizens of the crease more mobile and more effective.

A decrease of size in goaltending equipment would probably have a drastic effect if the league went back to the 70’s and early 80’s when pads weren’t much wider than the tender’s legs and anyone who wore a mask looked like Jason from the Friday the 13th movies. Diminutive gear would certainly result in more goals and probably more injuries to goalies.

Goaltenders have been made more vulnerable to scoring because of the limits the NHL has imposed on handling the puck. If a goalie freezes the puck unnecessarily then he can be called for delay of game. Additionally, the NHL’s creation of a trapezoid area demarcating the only space behind the goal line that a tender can handle the puck means that shooters have more access to the puck and greater opportunity to make plays.

In past seasons goaltenders could handle and freeze the puck more often, which meant they could keep it away from the offense before a winger ever had a chance to shoot. Now net-minders must wait for the shot more often, making them more reactive than proactive.

Finally, along with the incredible shrinking goaltender there’s the amazing expanding offensive zone. Neutral ice has been compacted and the offensive zones have been extended by four feet, creating more attack space, greater offensive mobility, and a lot more ice for the defense to cover, especially on the power play.

This season the team that has really taken advantage of having more open ice and less opposition is the Ottawa Senators who have scored 185 goals in 44 games. The Senators could score 350 or more goals this season. That’s something that hasn’t been done in a decade.

The game has opened up and so too has the net. More scoring chances, fewer whistles, and ongoing play have combined to make life tougher for the defense and sweeter for the shooters. The result is fans are enjoying more action, which makes them the ultimate winners.

This article was written by Paul Mroczka sponsored by http://www.StubHub.com Searching for those hard to find tickets for the next NHL hockey game? Look no further than StubHub where fans buy and sell the hottest Sports Tickets. Reproductions of this article are encouraged but must include a link back to http://www.StubHub.com

I think I’ve just seen another miracle on ice …

The National Hockey League is back on one of the major American broadcast networks. Some would call that a miracle in itself, but I’m taking higher ground. Specifically, I’m referring to the quality of the broadcast. It’s one of the best-produced sports programs I’ve seen.

Kudos to NBC Sports!

America is a difficult market for hockey. It may be the world’s fastest team sport and it may encompass many attributes of skill and strength that should appeal to the American fan, but many regions in the USA have little or no local influence or infrastructure of any significance for the sport. That means any national broadcast package must overcome a series of complex perception issues, not the least of which is in attracting casual sports fans to even try viewing it. Some wags contend that the only real NHL fans are only found in their arenas — explaining why the capacity percentages for NHL games are higher than in any other sport — but, as a fan myself, I consider that a lazy observation.

I will agree that, more often than not, one has to actually attend a hockey game to become a fan. Therein lies the problem with most of its television broadcast packages in the USA. To date, they have not accurately captured the essence of the game, which would offer new viewers a reason to become fans. For example, only baseball can rival hockey in aural effervescence — the sounds of sticks clapping the ice or shooting the puck, of hardened steel blades cutting ice, of the puck pinging off goal posts, of humanity crashing into each other and/or the sideboards — and usually, that means you have to be there to truly absorb the experience. Once you do, the odds are strong that you’ll be hooked on hockey, too.

This is a factor that American television networks never seemed to fathom. At least, until now. NBC’s geeks have found a way to mike the rink so the sizzle of hockey’s sounds are finely captured and the production crew has made sure that this audio element be made prominent throughout the game. The effect was absolutely visceral.

NBC’s broadcasters have a dual challenge in describing the action so as not to insult the intelligence of avid hockey fans while doing so in a manner that won’t confuse viewers new to the game. They accomplished it with aplomb, literally talking to two audiences simultaneously and seamlessly, using what’s becoming a lost art in American sportscasting: selecting their terms judiciously and sparingly.

Meanwhile, the studio broadcasters worked from a bright-but-subtle, well-designed set and deployed the same discipline. The anchor, former Philadelphia Flyer goalie Bill Clement, is often reduced to a shill when he hosts the NHL’s cable package on OLN. However, on NBC, he was excellently understated, allowing his analysts to be themselves rather than talking heads and giving each discussion point only the time it needed, letting each message sell itself to each viewer. It will be interesting to see if NBC keeps that set outside, at the skating rink adjacent to their New York headquarters. It’s the ultimate visual aid, of course, and Clement’s obvious effortless abilities on it not only allows him to more smoothly elaborate an aspect of the game, by inference the new viewer can identify with skating as an activity available to everyone.

I never thought I’d see the day when an American video production of a hockey game was actually better than its Canadian counterpart, but NBC did it. Comparatively speaking, hockey broadcasts in Europe are basic and banal, but those countries are more attuned to the game and actually seem to prefer that sort of presentation. The Canadians are rightfully viewed as being state-of-the-art when it comes to televising hockey. Any true fan will confirm that Hockey Night in Canada is a Saturday night rite of respect to a game that, on many occasions, can count 25% of that nation’s population among its audience.

And yet, the NBC production was crisper, often with more unique but very useful camera angles that provided perfect sightlines to the puck and any action around it. They integrated graphics into the action that far exceeded anything I’ve seen anywhere else. Some simple additions, such as drop-downs logging the shift time of a particular player, aid an avid fan’s awareness of unfolding team strategy while also enlightening the new viewer as to how quickly player changes occur and why. Better yet, the graphics were never obtrusive, allowing viewers to check them at their discretion (as opposed to ‘demanding’ their attention by ’scrolling’ data while action is occurring).

It’s hard to believe this came from the network that, 30 years ago, gave us the late, unlamented Peter Puck. That was the cartoon character NBC invented during their first, unsuccessful attempt to broadcast hockey. The last feature hockey needed then, or now, is a reversion to kids’ programing in the midst of a sportscast that wants to be taken more seriously by the adult American market.

It’s also good to see technology deployed in more refined terms. That wasn’t always the case. When they had the national broadcast package, Fox Network’s attempt to follow the puck with a ridiculous ‘virtual tracking path’ — derisively termed the ’sperm’ puck, as that’s the image it resembled — overshadowed the action, and combined with its morphing robot graphics presenting scores, hockey was trivialized to serving as a backdrop for ersatz video games. New viewers only remembered effects, and avid fans got tired of trying to look past all that to see if a real game happened to be in progress.

Many experts have thought that the advent of HDTV would be a boon to hockey, as the wider screen would enable more action to be portrayed. Perhaps NBC is preparing for that imminent change in broadcast standards. If so, they deserve high praise for their foresight and higher praise for their preparations. They’re making the experts look good with their predictions.

And speaking of preparations, the NHL is surely an early benefactor of NBC being the American outlet for the Winter Olympics, of which the hockey tournament is a major feature. The network is no doubt honing its cast and crew for that coverage, too. Given what they’ve already shown, hockey fans in America will be scanning their listings for NBC as opposed to any other available alternative, and sports fans in general will have no better opportunity to finally see why hockey is worth their attention.

During the 1980 Winter Games, in Lake Placid, when the USA’s team of collegians shocked the Russian juggernaut of professionals in the Upset of All Time, broadcaster Al Michaels uttered his famous, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”

It’s taken 25 years, but we can believe again. Only this time, it’s the coverage. NBC has gone for hockey gold and we’re the winners.

J Square Humboldt is the featured columnist at the Longer Life website, which is dedicated to providing information, strategies, analysis and commentary designed to improve the quality of living. His page can be found at http://longerlifegroup.com/cyberiter.html and his observations are published three times per week.