As the grind continues, NHL clings to dull ways

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Feb 26, 2002 | by Lynn Zinser

Welcome back to the grind.

The NHL resumes today after taking two fabulous weeks off to present Olympic hockey, its opportunity to sell a beautiful game to Olympic fans. The goal was to hook people into watching the NHL, now conveniently entering its playoff push.

The problem is, the NHL could be sued for false advertising.

That's because the Olympic game looks vastly different from the NHL version. The rules differences seem small until they are put in play on the ice. And there they look huge.

Olympic games fly by. Yes, part of that is the lack of TV timeouts, an impossibility in the NHL. But the rest is a set of rules that the NHL could easily change to liven up its game.

Not that it will.

At one of the Olympic quarterfinals, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was interviewed for the arena audience. The questioner asked him about the Olympic rules, and how the hockey here was wonderful. Bettman hemmed. He hawed. He hemmed a little more. Then he proclaimed the hockey spectacular because of all the talented players.

Well, those talented players all play in the NHL, along with lots more talented players. And in the NHL, they find themselves constrained to digging in the corners of the small rinks for pucks, tied to a dump-and-chase philosophy, chained to a one-line pass rule.

NHL hockey chugs. Olympic hockey soars.

It's not even about the scoring, which doesn't necessarily increase with Olympic rules. It's about the game in between the goals being so much more entertaining.

Improvement to the NHL game is as easy as changing a few small rules. Getting rid of the red line for passing, allowing those breathtaking long passes and scoring chances that materialize from nothing, is an easy adjustment. Not making players touch up for an icing call is another.

Enlarging the rinks is a stickier matter, and not entirely necessary to help the game.

But chances are the NHL will adopt only one of the Olympic rules: speeding up faceoffs by giving players only 15 seconds to get in position. NHL experts say that alone could cut 10 minutes off the games while giving them more flow.

The Olympics, though, make the resistance to the other changes more frustrating. What's holding the NHL back is a very North American, mostly Canadian, philosophy that values the digging and dumping and hitting as much as, if not more than, the skating and passing. In that regard, Canada winning the men's gold medal isn't necessarily a good thing. Canadians will claim that the NHL style works no matter the rink size and shouldn't be tinkered with.

The defenders are already coming out of the woodwork to stand behind Bettman. The viewpoints are grounded in the history of the game, a gritty, working-man's sport born on the frozen ponds of Canada.

The odd thing is, Bettman and much of the hockey brain trust have been searching for ways to increase scoring and speed up the games.

Using four players a side in overtime was one. Enforcing interference and obstruction rules was another.

Still, the NHL has continued to become more defensive, its offensive players hampered by the traps and left-wing locks and all their derivations. Just look at the once freewheeling Colorado Avalanche, who had to join the defense-first ranks to win another Stanley Cup.

That's the trend of the game, and while the NHL struggles to move out of its rut as the fourth of four pro sports in this country, it needs to reverse that.

Hockey fans were dazzled by the purer, faster Olympic game. But they will continue to be chained to the slower NHL model.

Now, the grind will be that much tougher to watch.