A Completely Infeasible and Far Fetched Plan to Save the NHL

There has been much discussion around these parts lately about the popularity of hockey now and in the future. I firmly believe the NHL is sliding slowly into irrelevance and you could make the argument that it is already irrelevant. Let's face it, when 80% of the franchises are located in a country that doesn't give a shit about the sport, there is a problem. That being said, there is hope....

Step 1: Retract some gosh darned teams

Why was hockey so badass in the fifties and sixties? A few reasons. A shallow player pool, resulting in amazing talent spread across every team; passionate rivalries because teams played early and often; and teams that didn't change players every week, giving more casual fans a better opportunity to learn the players, resulting in knowledgeable, passionate fan bases.

None of this exists now.

Solution: get rid of at least ten teams, preferably in places that are not selling tickets. I'm far too lazy to research who actually sells tickets, but I'm going to suggest who to contract.

Florida, Nashville, Atlanta, Carolina, Phoenix, Tampa Bay, Washington, San Jose, Columbus, and I would recommend consolidating L.A. and Anaheim into one team. Anaheim is in L.A. at this point.

I would love if more teams could be moved to Canada, but there does not seem to be places to put teams. Winnipeg and Quebec City are the only places big enough, but we know how that turned out.

Step 2: Slash costs.....Slash ticket prices

I realize costs are way down from before the lockout, but they are quickly escalating again. The NHL likes to pretend it can contend with the big boys as far as salaries, and as an extension of that, ticket prices. The reality is that they cannot. This league has nowhere near the revenue the other 'Big 3' has.

The NHL has an average salary of 1.75 million. The NFL has an average salary of 1.1 million. I realize NFL teams require twice as many players, but you must admit, this is retarded. Each NFL team makes 84 million dollars a year in TV money. The average NHL team takes in 81 million dollars a year total. This does not equate at all, especially when you consider how much more the NFL makes in terms of merchandising and other such things.

The way to bring people back to the rink is to reduce prices. The average family pretty much can't go to a game at this point. The only way to make this possible is to reduce costs, and this means reducing player salaries.

Step 3: Rule changes?

I'm not necessarily in favour of any or all of these changes. Is it worth saving the game if you're just going to bastardize it into something unrecognizable? Nevertheless, consider the following:

Remove fighting : The effect this would have is arguable. Some love fighting, some hate it. My guess is this would be a wash. You'd lose as many as you gain. In fact, forget I even brought this up.

Enforce the obstruction rules : This also doesn't work in my opinion. It just results in more powerplays, which are just guys passing the puck around, and are not overly exciting. This section is not working out the way I planned it. Maybe this game is not salvageable.

Bigger nets : The problem with hockey in most peoples eyes is flow of the game. Making the net bigger only results in more goals, not more flow. The game becomes no more exciting. Bigger nets are also useless. This is why I never write anything on here.

Olympic Ice : This is the moneymaker. The argument here is that the rinks cannot accommodate the changes. I call bullshit. Just add a few more feet of the pipes under the ice. The only issue I can see here is that you lose a little bit of seating capacity, but in most markets these seats are empty anyway, which looks retarded on TV. As an added bonus, you get more expensive front row seats because the circumference of the ice is larger! It's a win-win. This should also clear up some space on the ice for some sweet stuff to happen. The best hockey I ever remember seeing is the 2002 Olympics. This may have had more to do with who won and such but whatever.

Four on Four : I think this is dumb. It's all I'm going to say.

Conclusion:

This is much longer than intended and I didn't say half the shit I wanted too. But it's a start. To me, the biggest problem is the economics of the league. Like I said, they want to compete with Baseball, Football, and most of all Basketball. The reality is that they cannot right now. Someday they might get back to the hey day of the early nineties, but that will not happen soon, and not without some big time changes to the league. Status Quo is simply not good enough.