How to Fix the NHL

Out of the four major professional sports in the US, the NHL has probably lost the most popularity over the past 20 years.  Over-expansion, increased competition by other entertainment sources (TV), and bad decision making by people running the league have contributed to a major decline in hockey’s prominence.  Hockey’s problems are many:

• Too many teams
• Teams in the wrong areas/teams with no history
• The season is too long (too many meaningless games)
• Too many breaks in the action
• No rivalries anymore
• Few recognizable stars
• Competing for attention with other sports and during prime TV season

But not all is negative.  Hockey has some great things going for it too, as anyone who watched the men’s Olympic hockey can attest:

• Exciting, fast-paced action
• The game is much easier to follow on HD
• Meaningful games can be great (i.e. playoffs, Olympics)
• Fighting (who doesn’t like watching a hockey fight?)
• Better live than on TV

As a very casual fan of hockey, I watch very little NHL, especially during the regular season.  But I love Olympic hockey and will watch a decent amount of playoff hockey as well.  I could become a huge NHL fan, if only the league did more to cater to potential fans like myself.  Below are my ideas of changes that hockey could make to bring in new fans such as myself.  I realize that some of these changes would be impossible to implement, but nonetheless, here are my proposed changes to fix the NHL.

Reduce the Number of Teams

30 teams is too many.  Instead of six divisions of five teams, the NHL should go with four divisions of six teams for 24 teams total.  By reducing the number of teams, we will be improving the quality of talent on the ice for each game as well as getting rid of many of the new teams the NHL has foolishly added over the past 20 years.  The NHL has expanded to the southern US and small markets like Columbus and Carolina – into cities with no hockey tradition and little hope of establishing one.

Many of these new teams need to go.  To get to 24 teams, we need to get rid of six teams.  Since, we would also be bringing back the Quebec Nordiques, this means getting rid of seven teams.  Sorry Columbus, Nashville, Atlanta, Phoenix, Carolina, and Anaheim… the NHL will no longer be played in your city.  As for Tampa Bay and Florida, I propose a 7-game series at the end of the season to determine which of these teams gets to keep its place in the NHL.  (How exciting would that be?!) And Dallas, you are no longer named the Stars, the Minnesota Wild will be once again known as the Minnesota North Stars.

Go Back to Divisional Playoffs

As a kid growing up, I can remember the Bruins playing the Canadiens nearly every year in the playoffs.  The fact that every team played their division rivals in the first two round of the playoffs year after year built up tremendous rivalries.  This was unique to the NHL but the league abandoned this format when it decided that expanding to cities like Columbus and Nashville was more important than keeping the playoff rivalries in tact.  With four divisions of six teams, we will be bringing back the old-style inter-divisional playoff system.  Four teams in each division make the playoffs; one team moves on to play the conference’s other division winner for the right to go to the Stanley Cup Finals.

No Commercials Breaks During the Action

How great was the fact that the Olympics had no commercials breaks?  Unlike any NHL game, I did not channel surf because there was no time to.  I was glued to the action!  Get rid of mandatory commercial breaks and TV timeouts and the games flows much better and can more easily captivate the audience.  Soccer runs commercial-free for 45-50 minutes during each half and it is the most popular sport in the world.  The NHL should plaster sponsors on the front of each team’s jersey just as soccer does to offset the loss of TV commercial revenue.  Nowadays with Tivo and DVR, TV viewers can easily fast forward through their favorite shows.  Live sports will never have the same capability since most fans are going to prefer to watch games in real-time.

When I say no commercials, I mean no commercials where they typically have them now: after goals, when a penalty is called and at regularly scheduled intervals (TV timeouts).  I would actually give each team two (3-minute) timeouts per game in which TV stations could cut for commercials.  I believe a couple team timeouts per game would have minimal effect on the flow of the game and would also allow the league to bring in some TV ad revenue.  Also, in conjunction with this rule, referees would have to constantly keep the game moving.  I find that there is a lot of standing around in between the action in the NHL as opposed to the Olympics.  In the Olympics, it seems as though the Refs keep the game moving quicker.  The NHL should do this too.  NHL games with quick moving refs and (virtually) no commercials could probably end in 2 hours.

Larger Rinks

Everyone seems to love 4-on-4 hockey.  The reason?  Lots of open ice.  Changing the NHL to a 4-on4 game is not only too radical, its unnecessary.  Simply increase the size of the rinks by 10-15%.  And not just the rink, but the blue lines as well.  10% larger ice area plus 10% larger defensive/attacking zone will produce a product that is open similar to the 4-on4 game.  The NHL has done a good job the past few years in enacting rule changes to open up the game and increase scoring (2 line pass rule change, crack down on holding, reduce the size of goalie pads).  A larger rink would just be another step in the right direction.

Spring to Fall Season

Currently, the NHL plays its season from October to April.  This is the absolute worst time period for the season to take place.  It begins the season competing head to head with the NFL, college football, NBA, and college basketball.  During the season it competes for viewers with all these sports plus it is also prime TV season, with most shows running from the fall to the spring.  There is huge opportunity in my opinion during the summer for another sport to step up.  Right now, baseball is the only major sport that plays during the summer and I believe that is one of the reasons why baseball is very popular.  Baseball is boring as hell, but Americans love sports and it’s all they have during the summer.  Plus, prime time TV shows usually are off during this season so someone like myself is more likely to watch a hockey game if there is nothing else good on TV.  There would be no more breaks in the season for the Olympics either.  Oh, and finally, I would much rather go sit in a cold hockey arena in the Summer to cool off than during a freezing, cold winter day… but that might just be me.

Get Rid of Shootouts, Bring Back Ties, 10 Minute OT & Simplify Scoring

Shootouts are a ridiculous way to determine the winner of a hockey game.  There is nothing wrong with a tie… two teams play for 60 minutes plus a short overtime and if they are still tied, then just call it a tie.  The NHL should keep overtime sudden death and 4-on-4 , but increase the length to ten minutes.  And the complicated scoring system has got to go.  Here is how I would do it: 3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie, 0 points for a loss.   Simple and fair. The three points would hopefully encourage teams to go for the win rather than settling for a tie.

Shorten Season, Add Tournaments

82 games is way too many games for the NHL regular season.  Take a look at what happened in the Eastern Conference playoffs this year: the #8 seed beat the #1 seed, #7 beat #2, #6 beat #3.  The Conference Finals was played between the #7 seed and the #8 seed!  What’s the point of the regular season?  Obviously it doesn’t count for much.  The problem of the regular season in the NHL (you can add the NBA and MLB as well) is that there are way too many meaningless games.  The genius of the NFL and professional soccer leagues is that every game matters.  This is hardly the case in the NHL.  Another issue that I have is that the only goal a hockey team can have is to win the Stanley Cup.  What if there were other trophies teams could earn each year? We can solve both of these issues by reducing the season to 50 games and adding tournaments.  The NHL playoffs, the Olympics, the Beanpot… who doesn’t love tournament hockey?  Here are some ideas for tournaments that could take place during the NHL season:

• Knockout Style “Madness” Tournament – This could be played right after the All-Star game as the regular season takes a week or two off.  All 24 teams play with the top 8 teams (based on league record) getting a bye for the first round.  This plays out like the NCAA basketball tournament: single game elimination with teams playing every other day.  They could play this whole tournament in a week and a half and it would be awesome.  Also, I would play the entire tournament in the same city (using 2 rinks at the most).
• Rivalry Tournaments – These could be similar to the Beanpot in that the same teams could be invited to play every year.  Each tournament could have 4-8 teams and use its own format.  For example, how about a round-robin tournament for the original 6 teams?  Or how about a tournament for all of the Canadian teams?  Each of these small tournament could use their own rules… some could be round-robin with the top two teams playing to determine the winner, others could play a knockout tournament using the aggregate scoring from 2 games (home and away for each team), etc.  Each of these tournaments would have its own trophy, similar to how college football teams play for Victory Bells and Paul Bunyan trophies. Every team would play in only one of these tournament and it would be the same one year after year.  Also, I would play the tournaments out during the season with tournament games interspersed throughout the regular season (similar to league cup tournaments in European soccer).
• Consolation Playoffs – The 8 teams that don’t make the playoffs play a knockout tournament with teams playing short, best-of-three series.  The winner of the tournament could get an extra draft pick (say the 9th pick in the draft) and the 2 teams who play in the finals would get an invite to the…
• Preseason Invitational – Right before the regular season starts, I would have 8 teams come and play a tournament to kick off the regular season.  I would invite the final 4 teams from the previous NHL playoffs, the final 2 from the consolation playoffs, winner of the previous season’s knockout tourney and the winner of the previous season’s Preseason Invitational.  We could fill-in these invites with tournament runner-ups or the top teams by regular season points if one team qualified more than once.  While other teams are still going through pre-season, these 8 teams would play in New York (the media capital!) to start the season.

These are just some ideas for tournaments.  There are almost limitless ways to have tournaments and nearly all would be more exciting and generate more interest than virtually meaningless regular season games.

Bring Back Pee Wee One-on-One During Period Intermissions

When I was younger, I used to watch a ton of Bruins games and possibly my favorite part was Pee Wee One-on-One that they would do between the first and second period.  Pee Wee One-on-One was basically a shootout between local youth teams (probably kids that were 8-12 years old).  I think this would still be fascinating today for me to watch as an adult, but I am sure that kids would love it.  And what better demographic for the NHL to market to than kids?  The other major American sports seem to have done a much better job of this than the NHL.  Hockey has seemingly missed a generation of kids over the past 20 years and this might be one small step in reaching out to the next generation.