Competition committee recommendations

[CarltonTheBear]

The competition committee, made up by 5 NHL GMs/coaches/owners (Poile, Holland, Yzerman, Carlyle, Snider) and 5 players (Backes, Pietrangelo, Cammalleri, Hainsey, C Schneider) met today. They recommended a few changes that will be brought to the NHL board of governors, where they'll likely be implemented.

1) Mandatory visors will be grandfathered in. Any player who currently has more than 25 NHL games played will not be forced to wear a visor.
2) Shallower nets. The depth of the net will be decreased 4 inches to give players more room to move behind the net.
3) Hybrid-icing will be studied in the pre-season.
4) Double-minor high sticking penalties will automatically be reviewed.

Almost every new player entering the league is keeping his visor on. So grandfathering them in is a nice and obvious step, but after the Staal incident you have to wonder what it will take for the league to finally just make it mandated for everybody. Hopefully we'll never find out.

The net thing makes sense in theory, so why not go for it.

They experimented with hybrid icing in the AHL season. I know it's a different ballgame from the NHL, but it's not like preseason is the same thing either.

I'm not entirely sure what's to review in double-minor high sticking penalties. Maybe I'm just missing the obvious here, but it seems simple enough. If there's blood, it's an extra two. What's a replay going to determine? Whether or not it was actually the offending players stick that caught the guy in the face? I guess that makes sense. But then what? If it wasn't the offending players stick, does it get taken down to 2-minutes or is it gone completely?

Also, does anybody find it odd that the safety of the NHL players is somewhat being dictated by a guy who thinks helmets cause concussions?

 

[losveratos]

4) Double-minor high sticking penalties will automatically be reviewed.

I'm not entirely sure what's to review in double-minor high sticking penalties. Maybe I'm just missing the obvious here, but it seems simple enough. If there's blood, it's an extra two. What's a replay going to determine? Whether or not it was actually the offending players stick that caught the guy in the face? I guess that makes sense. But then what? If it wasn't the offending players stick, does it get taken down to 2-minutes or is it gone completely?

I don't think they mean reviewed on the ice. Maybe they mean reviewed after the game for a possible suspension?

 

[princedpw]

4) Double-minor high sticking penalties will automatically be reviewed.

I'm not entirely sure what's to review in double-minor high sticking penalties. Maybe I'm just missing the obvious here, but it seems simple enough. If there's blood, it's an extra two. What's a replay going to determine? Whether or not it was actually the offending players stick that caught the guy in the face? I guess that makes sense. But then what? If it wasn't the offending players stick, does it get taken down to 2-minutes or is it gone completely?

I don't think they mean reviewed on the ice. Maybe they mean reviewed after the game for a possible suspension?

I don't know what they mean either.  But the whole blood/no blood being the key to the length of this penalty (and no other penalty) seems a little bogus to me ...

 

[Peter D.]

About time that visors are going to be grandfathered in.  I'd just implement it league wide, and don't understand why the last remaining don't wear one, but this is a good compromise.

Shallower nets -- I'm not going to put too much stock into this one.  The league has tried numerous things over the years to try and improve scoring with minimal effect.  I think it was the late '90s/early '00s that they pushed the nets out a few feet from the end boards (almost looked like an Olympic sized depth) for this exact reason and abandoned it shortly thereafter.  Worth the try, just not sold it'll do much.

 

[Deebo]

I didn't really care either way about visors being mandatory.

If they want to wear them fine, if not, its your stupid decision.

 

[Kin]

I don't really get why people are so quick to act like not having visors is history's greatest tragedy while being alright with any and all changes to the icing policy being "studied" for a hundred years. Seriously, the amount of serious injuries in the NHL over the last few decades caused by the current icing rule is easily on par with the serious eye injuries that a visor would have prevented.

 

[Deebo]

I don't really get why people are so quick to act like not having visors is history's greatest tragedy while being alright with any and all changes to the icing policy being "studied" for a hundred years. Seriously, the amount of serious injuries in the NHL over the last few decades caused by the current icing rule is easily on par with the serious eye injuries that a visor would have prevented.

I think the icing rule is worse than visors not being required.

A player can't decide not to participate in a race to touch up an icing while a player can easily decide to put a visor on.

 

[Peter D.]

I don't really get why people are so quick to act like not having visors is history's greatest tragedy while being alright with any and all changes to the icing policy being "studied" for a hundred years. Seriously, the amount of serious injuries in the NHL over the last few decades caused by the current icing rule is easily on par with the serious eye injuries that a visor would have prevented.

No touch icing should have been implemented many years ago.

 

[Frank E]

4) Double-minor high sticking penalties will automatically be reviewed.

I'm not entirely sure what's to review in double-minor high sticking penalties. Maybe I'm just missing the obvious here, but it seems simple enough. If there's blood, it's an extra two. What's a replay going to determine? Whether or not it was actually the offending players stick that caught the guy in the face? I guess that makes sense. But then what? If it wasn't the offending players stick, does it get taken down to 2-minutes or is it gone completely?

I don't think they mean reviewed on the ice. Maybe they mean reviewed after the game for a possible suspension?

I don't know what they mean either.  But the whole blood/no blood being the key to the length of this penalty (and no other penalty) seems a little bogus to me ...

So I guess that means that they're going to be suspending more guys for high sticks?  Why else would they review it?

What was stopping them for reviewing and suspending them before?

Also want to agree with pretty much everyone that the whole icing thing should have been changed a long time ago...all I do is cringe now when I see a race for the iced puck...these guys are too big and fast for that kind of thing these days.

 

[RobDM]

I'm not entirely sure what's to review in double-minor high sticking penalties. Maybe I'm just missing the obvious here, but it seems simple enough. If there's blood, it's an extra two. What's a replay going to determine? Whether or not it was actually the offending players stick that caught the guy in the face? I guess that makes sense. But then what? If it wasn't the offending players stick, does it get taken down to 2-minutes or is it gone completely??

Correct. For example, they want to eliminate the situations where a penalty is incorrectly assessed, when actually it was the stick of a fouled player's own teammate that did the damage.

Here's a brief write-up that I did when I covered the NHL GM meetings in March.
http://www.tmlfans.ca/blogs/7919-nhl-general-managers-review-tweaks

 

[hockeyfan1]

Smaller equipment troublesome for Rangers netminder Lundqvist?

First, the team defence is not good, which can make any goalie look bad. The second is that he looks smaller. In September, Lundqvist said he felt faster in the new equipment...but that playing as deep as he does, there are more shooting holes than ever.

Source:  THN