This is why I hate North American hockey

Whenever the subject of hockey comes up, I'm the pansy who prattles on about how much he likes the European game — the big rinks, the passing, the fast players, and — most importantly, a lack of fighting. The fighting in North American hockey is one of the main reasons I stopped paying any attention to the sport a decade ago. What kind of legitimate sport has "enforcers" — whose mission is to engage other "enforcers" in the sort of activity that would get regular people arrested if they did it outside of a bar? I guess the closest analogy is rollerball — which is more or less the way many Americans view hockey.

Of course, every once in a while, someone "crosses the line" and does something particularly sociopathic — as goalie Jonathan Roy did by beating up his opposite number in a Quebec Major Junior Hockey League hockey playoff game Saturday night. And for a few days, we all pontificate over the incident, and tut-tut about how the player in question did not respect the "unwritten rules" governing ritualized combat on the ice.

But the real problem isn't idiots like Roy. It is that the hockey world has created a bizarre culture in which the idea of taking off your gauntlets and getting into fistfights with your opponent is considered a "normal" part of the game. So long as this convention persists, there will be fights, and some people will get carried away and do especially stupid things. Is it too much to ask that — in a society where violence is seen as a pathology in virtually every other context — maybe we should reexamine the century-old boys-will-be-boys idea that hockey games should be periodically stopped so that certain designated players can engage in medieval combat for the benefit of drunken fans?

The lockout season was almost a necessity in this league -- mainly because the television revenue anticipated by the NHL in the early 1990s never materialized, which meant the entire league's finances were highly dysfunctional. I posted an interesting vanity on the subject during the lockout in 2005.

Recent Events in NHL History

The negative influence of the Devils' "neutral zone trap" in the 1990s is really a myth -- along with the notion that it "made the game so slow that it was nearly unwatchable." The Devils simply executed a trapping (and counter-attacking) system that had been perfected two decades earlier by the Montreal Canadiens. It's no coincidence that the Devils adopted this system in 1993-94 when they hired Canadiens' Hall of Famers Jacques Lemaire and Larry Robinson as head coach and assistant coach, respectively.

Nobody ever thought the Canadians were a slow, dull, excessively defensive team back in their heydey -- and the reality is that the Devils weren't, either. Let's take a look at the Devils' track record during their dominance of the 1990s . . .

1. 1993-94 was the first year of the Lemaire/Robinson regime. The Devils finished second in the Eastern Conference and made it to the conference finals before losing to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Rangers in a seven-game conference final that may have been the best playoff series ever played. New Jersey scored 306 goals that year . . . which was #2 in the NHL behind Detroit, and seven more than the Rangers -- who supposedly played an "exciting, offensive, wide-open" system that (for some reason) was described as an exciting contrast to the "dull, defensive, stifling" system of the Devils. Go figure. The Devils had 14 players with 10 or more goals that season -- an indication of just how much emphasis the team placed on solid depth instead of high-priced superstars. That lack of superstar offensive talent over the last 15 years is probably the major reason why the myth of a "slow, boring" Devils team has perpetuated for so long.

2. The Devils struggled offensively in the strike-shortened 1995 season, but that was mainly due to the offensive problems of three key forwards: John MacLean, Stephane Richer, and Claude Lemieux. They played the season with their 1993-94 roster largely intact, with a couple of key exceptions: (a) center Bernie Nicholls was no longer on the team, and (b) Scott Stevens was no longer expected to play an offensive-oriented style of play as a defenseman (he had been the team's leading scorer in 1993-94). In 1995, a trade for playmaking center Neal Broten (from Dallas) brought their slumping wingers to life, and a trade-deadline deal for Shawn Chambers gave them the third "offensive" defenseman they had been missing all season long. The rest is history . . . in the Stanley Cup finals they walked all over the heavily-favored Detroit Red Wings in a series that was so one-sided that Detroit only had two leads in the four-game sweep. The Devils scored 16 goals in the finals that year -- hardly a case of "dull, boring hockey."

3. The Devils certainly played a lot of dull, boring hockey for several years after that -- and they weren't very successful, either. They missed the playoffs in 1996 (the last time they failed to make the playoffs, to this day), then lost in the first or second round to teams that seemed vastly inferior (on paper, at least) for several seasons.

4. 1999-2000 brought their second Stanley Cup championship in six years. The team scored 251 goals that year -- #2 in the NHL (behind Detroit again). This was the first year of the "A-Line" -- with Jason Arnott playing center between Patrik Elias and Petr Sykora. After the Devils beat the Dallas Stars 7-3 in Game 1 of the Finals (New Jersey would eventually win in six games), Dallas coach Ken Hitchcock was shocked at how fast the Devils were as a team . . . "This is the fastest team we've played all year," he said in the post-game interview -- which was all the more remarkable not only because of New Jersey's reputation as a slow, plodding team but because Dallas had already beaten free-wheeling teams like Edmonton and Colorado to advance to the Finals.

5. The Devils lost to Colorado in a seven-game Finals in 2000-01 -- a year in which New Jersey led the NHL with 295 goals. This was Year 2 of the "A-Line," in which Patrik Elias finished as the league's third-leading scorer (the closest a Devil has ever come to winning a scoring title, I believe). That team had as deep a corps of centers as I've ever seen (Jason Arnott, Scott Gomez, Bobby Holik and Selke Trophy winner John Madden), which was a major factor in their offensive success ("You can't match up against all of them," one coach said, "so Gomez or Holik usually plays against air.").

So I don't know where all that nonsense about "slow, unwatchable" hockey comes from as far as the Devils are concerned. Scoring declined league-wide throughout the 1990s for a number of reasons, and the neutral-zone trap wasn't even a big reason. A number of teams around the league adopted the trap mainly to compensate for their lack of talent, which was REALLY one of the main factors (along with superior goaltending and the shrinking size of the ice surface as players got bigger) in the lack of scoring during that era.

Your post made me smile, as it reminded me somewhat of conversations with my wife, an unabashed Devils fan (although she does not maintain the level of knowledge you do). Her father was involved with the Devils organization for a number of years during the 90s and even has a Stanley Cup ring. Her uncle remains with the organization.

Are you trying to say the negative influence of the neutral zone trap as it pertains to the Devils only is a myth? Even if that is your argument, I would tend to disagree as the Devils obviously were the “best” at using the trap. Due to the success of the Devils with its use, every team began to run a form of it, and you cannot tell me that the game on the whole did not slow down considerably. I believe overall viewership dropped as well during this time period because hockey, all of a sudden, became boring. And if it weren't such a problem, then why did the NHL remove the two line pass rule and begin implementing obstruction penalties to a greater extent? Obviously, the NHL was tipped off that the game had changed substantially to the detriment of the fan base. Otherwise, why open the game up as they did?

And in regards to the lock out season, I didn't say that the lockout itself was not a necessity. I was pointing out that it wasn't a particular high point in the life of the NHL when Roenick told the fans - the actual people who pay their outrageous ticket prices - to “kiss his A$S.” Further, I believe that the fact that ticket prices didn't come down after the lockout - notwithstanding the implementation of salary caps - is another black eye for the league.

But not to get away from my main point, all of these problems and the Flyers’ Cups in the 70s were the low point of the NHL? Sorry, I do not buy that one.

I think you're confusing "coincidence" with "cause" as it pertains to the neutral-zone trap. There were other factors that had a far bigger impact on the game of hockey at the time. A serious decline in talent was by far the biggest factor, and it was exacerbated at the time because the league was going through an idiotic expansion process that would ultimately result in a large number of unstable franchises. The NHL expanded from 21 teams to 30 teams in a ten-year period from 1991 to 2000 -- and this occurred even as participation in youth hockey in Canada declined considerably. There was barely enough talent to fill out 21 rosters in the mid-1990s, let alone 30.

The neutral-zone trap was a measure that was implemented not because the Devils used it successfully, but because professional hockey -- largely due to the influences I described above -- "naturally" developed into an over-coached, system-oriented game in which players with limited hockey skills were able to find their way onto the rosters (and even the second forward lines) of many NHL teams.

I've often said that the 1993 draft was a good indication of how the NHL had changed in that period of time. Adam Deadmarsh, who played junior hockey for Portland of the WHL, was considered an ideal prototype for an NHL player at the time. He was selected with the 14th overall pick in the first round by the Quebec Nordiques, and he played on their Stanley Cup team in 1996. And yet Deadmarsh was really nothing more than a solid third-line player. He scored almost 100 points in his best season in junior hockey, but NHL teams were probably more interested in the aggressive physical style his 200+ penalty minutes indicated. He turned out to be a good, solid player (maybe 25 goals a season) on a very talented team, but he certainly wasn't the kind of out-of-this-world talent that one would look for in a top draft pick.

I believe overall viewership dropped as well during this time period because hockey, all of a sudden, became boring. And if it weren't such a problem, then why did the NHL remove the two line pass rule and begin implementing obstruction penalties to a greater extent?

I don't know if "overall viewership" really dropped at all in the mid-1990s. Keep in mind that the league signed its first U.S. regular-season network contract (with Fox, I believe) at the time, and television ratings declined over the next few years because they had been artificially inflated in 1994 by the fact that the Stanley Cup had been won by a team in the largest television market. I suspect the declining ratings were caused as much by the novelty of network television hockey wearing off, and by the fact that hockey simply doesn't translate well to television at all (which explains why arena attendance at NHL games flourished even as television ratings declined).

Obviously, the NHL was tipped off that the game had changed substantially to the detriment of the fan base. Otherwise, why open the game up as they did?

That's a very good point. This had as much to do with the diminishing size of the ice as players got bigger (take a look at how big Eric Lindros looked next to his teammates in the early 1990s, compared to how "slightly bigger than average" he looked at the end of his career) as anything else. Ironically, the so-called "opening up" of the game may actually be counter-productive in some ways. The neutral-zone trap is used extensively in Europe because it helps a team cover a larger ice surface where longer passes are permitted.

Further, I believe that the fact that ticket prices didn't come down after the lockout - notwithstanding the implementation of salary caps - is another black eye for the league.

I agree with you on that one, but at a time when television revenue is declining there is no way for NHL teams to stay in business without getting more revenue from other sources (gate receipts, luxury boxes, parking, concessions, etc.).

But not to get away from my main point, all of these problems and the Flyers’ Cups in the 70s were the low point of the NHL?

My point was that the biggest impact the Flyers of the 1970s had on hockey was the way they helped reinforce a stereotype of the game that made it something of a caricature that one would expect to see in professional wrestling.

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