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the game now ,to me, is simply unwatchable. After seeing those great Oiler teams from the 1980’s..its just too defensive now. Teams started using these “defensive systems” in the mid 90’s to try and keep up with the more talented teams and to me,ruined the game. The stars cant do what they do best. Now, they got all these crazy rules to try and open up the scoring, and its just not working. Goalie pads are just ridiculously big...i dont know..all the games look the same to me now. 2-1...3-2...awful. A scrambled mess..shoot outs...2 line passes are allowed now. Its a mess.

Good points. I forgot to mention all the stupid rules tinkering. Teams would have figured out a way to beat the “trap” defense (thanks, Devils) eventually. And what the hell was wrong with regular season ties anyway? The system worked in the NHL for 50+ years or whatever, and I never had a problem with a regular season tie. Each team got a point, so what? The 5-minute overtime was okay, I suppose, but the shootouts? Ludicrous.

Yeah, I miss ‘70s and ‘80s hockey.

Good points, but I have to disagree with you on big one. The "defensive systems" you refer to actually go back a long ways. It was the Montreal Canadiens who adopted the neutral-zone trap and then worked it to perfection in the 1970s. It's really a European approach to hockey, built around the challenges of defending a larger ice surface with less restrictive offsides rules (the elimination of the red line under current NHL rules that allow longer passes into the neutral zone was adopted by the NHL to match international rules).

The Edmonton Oilers were actually the exception in a lot of ways, not the norm. There's been a swing back and forth in the NHL between the "Montreal style" and the "Edmonton style," and as others have pointed out, the expansion of the last two decades has spread a limited talent pool over a larger league and made it more difficult to get a lot of talent concentrated on one team.