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Thursday, February 18, 2010
Olympic Hockey
I was watching a period of Sweden/Germany and a period of Czech/Slovak last night. It is simply far better than a standard NHL game. The pace of the game is faster, and the hitting was decent.
In most sports, when you expand the number of players from Olympics to a league game you simply have lesser talented, but similarly-profiled players. In the NHL, it’s not like that. The profile of players in the top 2 lines is simply not the same as the bottom 2 lines. The NHL has determined that you can afford to have a “checking” line, for the same reason they play a different style of game when they are one-goal ahead: risk aversion.
Playoff NHL hockey (when down to 8 teams) is like Olympic hockey. That’s the kind of hockey I really like. Give me rules for regular season NHL that will provide the players (and coaches) incentives to play and select players as if it’s NHL playoff hockey. What can be done?