"Are You Not Entertained?"

[BB79]

progress doesn’t always mean improvement.

You can acknowledge the fact that players are faster and more skilled today while at the same time understanding that for many (most?) fans there is a yearning for a more physical/meaner/tougher style of play.

I look back at the early 90s vs today...I was more entertained back then than today. If I wanted all offense with no contact I'd watch the Celtics. If it isn't improvement it isn't progress, it's regress.

 

[wintersej]

Nice points you made. Betteman, brought that NBA mentality with him, show the high flying dunks no defense league, now look what they have for a product. I cannot remember the last time I watched a basketball game. Baseball took a similar path, home runs, home runs, the bunt whats that ,hitting behind the runner all extinct. NHL do not take the same path.

And yet those sports still make the NHL look like a clown league. The NHL is closer in revenue to Japanese baseball than it is to the NBA and reclamation projects like Lucas Giolito make several million dollars a year more than Connor McDavid.

 

[TP70BruinsCup]

@GordonHowe

excellent post and 100% correct!!!

I can remember in the 80’s, teams played within their division eight times a season. Eight. Take the Bruins in 1988. They played Buffalo 8 times in the regular season then beat them in 6 games in the playoffs. 14 times in total they faced off. By the playoffs the intensity was there……but it all really started after the second time they played that year. Same for games vs Montreal or Hartford or Quebec. Same for Montreal vs Quebec or Toronto vs Chicago or Detroit and Minnesota or Edmonton vs Calgary. That gave the game life and was worth watching.

Now? Well the media will play up a big game and say there could be ‘fireworks’ in this game. Then when it happens the intermission or post game talking heads say there’s no place in the game for that.…and are total ‘NHL cheerleader’. Or they go on about how many calls the refs got right. Wow. So ‘entertaining’ as you say. Pathetic. It is made the greatest game on earth hard to watch. The league over the past 20 years or so has tweaked the game so much, brought in dumb rules (puck over the glass……stupid reviews, 3 on 3 pond hockey bag skates…..stay on the ice if you ice the puck……)…..that for fans that saw the game +40 years ago like me it’s almost unwatchable. And as you can see I’m not talking about fighting or brawls.

 

[BruinDust]

The league brought in Bettman because revenues were not anywhere near on par with other major sports in the U.S. and hockey was very much a niche sport. And if we are honest, watching those games from the 70s, things I watched as a kid, it's kind of embarrassing, and easy to see why the sport was not catching on outside of its core markets.

That said. it seems like it has gone too far in the rush to get away from that image. But really, it hasn't been a rush, has it? It's been over 30 years now since Bettman has been at the helm, and we are seeing the fruits of the slow, steady change to soccer on ice and the diminishing of the things that made hockey unique among sports.

I would submit that the real change that is now driving this 'evolution' is the players. A generation of North American players now have grown up and learned the sport in the age of Bettman, and they are not bringing the same attitude and skillsets to the sport. They don't miss the old days of hockey because they have never know anything else. Who is left in the league that played when Bettman was not commissioner? No one and they've all come up well after his regime and direction was solidly entrenched.

Pushback against a sanitized sport is growing smaller and smaller with time. It makes me sad, but life is change, and I still love the sport and watching it, even if what I enjoy is different from how it was 20 years ago.

Many won't agree with this but your pinning far too much blame on Bettman.

If we are being honest, he didn't even put in place the instigator rule which is by far the biggest change we've seen towards fisticuffs/intensity/emotion/etc. . It was Gil Stein during his brief time at the helm. Coincidentally a former Flyer's executive from the 1970s. When Bettman took over later in that season where the instigator came into effect (1992-93). Large scale brawls (leaving the bench) was banned in the late 1980s (1987). He did put in place the stiffer penalties for instigating fights in the final 5 mins.

Bettman brought in the "new NHL" rules to speed up the game coming out of the lockout. But that was done for the right reasons and doesn't seem like many are pushing for the return of the red line and clutch and grab hockey. One unintended consequence of this is the game got too fast for your stereotypical enforcer. You couldn't afford to dress a forward to play 3-4 mins a game whose only role was fight the other team's enforcer. And without an enforcer or fighter on both sides, the concept doesn't even work. When a young Brad Marchand was running around causing havoc, the other team's enforcer didn't go at the 5'9 Marchand. The other team's enforcer would say to Shawn Thornton "get Marchand to cut out the crap, or YOU (Thornton) will have to pay the price, not him (Marchand)". Doesn't work without a willing combatant on both sides.

The NHL doesn't market itself around fighting and fisticuffs. Can you blame them? No right minded sports organization would. Corporate sponsorship is vitally important to the health of the league overall. I don't recall the NHL marketing itself as fisticuffs on ice before Bettman either.

It's the grassroots level that has really changed. When I played minor hockey in Canada in the mid-1990s, a fight was an automatic week suspension. And describing minor hockey fights with two kids wearing metal face shields and wearing padded gloves a fight is still to me a bit of a stretch. I was suspended 3 times in during my time in minor hockey. The first time two punches were thrown (one by me and one by him) and we landed on top of one another. The 2nd time I was sucker-punched and as I was falling grabbed onto the guy and pulled him to the ice before it was broke up. Still in both cases got an automatic week suspension. Pretty stiff all things considered. And that was almost 30 years ago.

My father got involved in the local high school hockey back in the mid-2000s. While there, the league executive (which he was part of and agreed with) instituted a rule where you get in one fight, ONE, you were done with high school hockey for the year. Doesn't matter the circumstances. Doesn't matter if the idiot ref called what should of been a roughing minor a fighting major. No recourse for the player to appeal either. When he told me this at the supper table (and I wasn't a player at that point, too old), we almost came to blows I disagreed with the league's new rule wholeheartedly. I don't agree with putting a kids season on the line because he could be defending himself from an aggressive player. And that's almost 20 years ago.

A co-worker of mine was formally involved with the provincial governing body for hockey where I live. We had a (friendly) discussion a few weeks ago about the sport at the grassroots level and their comment to me was the overall sentiment now is the "old school" mentality that myself and many others here still possess has no place in youth hockey anymore. What was once a "working-class" sport has now become gentrified and richer, more conservative-thinking parents who are now the ones on the committees and minor hockey executives making decisions and modifying the rules. My co-worker told me a story about a kid who called another kid a "word for a cat" at the face-off dot. The kid was ejected from the game and had to go in front of a panel of adults to explain his actions to get to play again. Even trash talking isn't tolerated anymore.

The emotion is being sucked out of the NHL game because the players entering the league grew up playing in a much different environment than did the players of yester-year. It's the grassroots level that is constantly changing. The NHL product is just seeing the consequences of it.

 

[sarge88]

How can any professional sport make progress towards the future, if the majority of it's fans are stuck in the past!.
Progression is a natural order of things, the past is all memories some very good and some not so good.
You live and learn from the past, you apply them to the present and adjust for the future.
The NHL is not any different, yes the game has changed, so has the kids playing the game, so embrace the present and look to the future.
The game is still entertaining regardless of what the people stuck in past have to say about it.
Hell, I loved the past history of this great game, but you have to let go at some time, otherwise you don't grow as a person.

So I missed something in my first reply to this post but I think its important enough to revisit.

Your first sentence above both contradicts the point I think you’re trying to make and verifies the point of the original post.

As you point out, if the:

“majority of fans are stuck in the past”……then wouldn’t it stand to reason that the game should do it’s best to revert back to what “the majority” want?

Otherwise, it’s simply the minority trying to force its version of the game down the throats of the “majority”.

 

[Mr. Make-Believe]

Can I miss a lot of the physicality, rawness and fights while simultaneously loving the increased speed, scoring and skill?

 

[Hookslide]

And yet those sports still make the NHL look like a clown league. The NHL is closer in revenue to Japanese baseball than it is to the NBA and reclamation projects like Lucas Giolito make several million dollars a year more than Connor McDavid.

What you are also saying that the fans of those leagues should be considered " clown fans" because they support that crap.

 

[smithformeragent]

Can I miss a lot of the physicality, rawness and fights while simultaneously loving the increased speed, scoring and skill?

Assuming you cannot have both, at what point did the league hit its apex? (Assuming it has)

I read this a couple of summers ago. It’s from a Leafs perspective and bulk of the books is about the 93 Campbell Conference Final, but it’s a good read. The beginning hits on on 92-93 being one of the last years before expansion truly exploded and a lot of the old barns like the Forum and Boston Garden were retired.

The Last Good Year

The Last Good Year – Damien Cox Over the years, I’ve made several trips to Toronto, the first time being in 2001, two years after the final game played at Maple Leaf Gardens, the longti…

everyreadthing.com

I’ll throw that into the mix as well. These new buildings offer state of the art amenities, every concession item one could hope for, comfortable seats and more, and yet they’re all very generic and lack character.

The Td Garden barely resembles the FleetCenter when it originally opened. I hate that the seats are no longer gold, as that was one of the unique calling cards that carried over from the real Garden.

 

[wintersej]

So I missed something in my first reply to this post but I think its important enough to revisit.

Your first sentence above both contradicts the point I think you’re trying to make and verifies the point of the original post.

As you point out, if the:

“majority of fans are stuck in the past”……then wouldn’t it stand to reason that the game should do it’s best to revert back to what “the majority” want?

Otherwise, it’s simply the minority trying to force its version of the game down the throats of the “majority”.

Majority of fans over 40, sure. Is that the future of the game?

 

[wintersej]

Honestly, I do think the missing part of this conversation is the corporate part. We see corporations abandoning social media platforms or TV news programs because of controversy. Discover card or whatever doesn’t want blood on the ice on their logo. The NHL doesn’t want their only advertisers to be or whatever.

 

[sarge88]

Majority of fans over 40, sure. Is that the future of the game?

Well, if the fans under 40 were exposed to the game the over 40 crowd wanted, who knows how many of them would realize and appreciate what they were missing?

Also, the OP just said majority…..they didn’t specify any subset of fans.

 

[smithformeragent]

Let’s stay out of the political waters.

 

[wintersej]

Well, if the fans under 40 were exposed to the game the over 40 crowd wanted, who knows how many of them would realize and appreciate what they were missing?

Also, the OP just said majority…..they didn’t specify any subset of fans.

A higher percentage of young people list hockey as their favorite sport than was the case pre-Bettman. The less violent version is more popular than the more violent version was.

Football is seeing horrendous growth in the younger age markets. And watching someone else playing video games is seeing tremendous growth.

Preferred sport for adults in the U.S. by age 2019 | Statista

Many sports are played in the United States, either as hobbies or professional careers.

www.statista.com

 

[sarge88]

A higher percentage of young people list hockey as their favorite sport than was the case pre-Bettman. The less violent version is more popular than the more violent version was.

Football is seeing horrendous growth in the younger age markets. And watching someone else playing video games is seeing tremendous growth.

Preferred sport for adults in the U.S. by age 2019 | Statista

Many sports are played in the United States, either as hobbies or professional careers.

www.statista.com

There’s a lot that goes into this though.

Marketing, social media, access, etc.

I find it hard to believe that the majority of todays youth are turned off by violence, when violent video games are so prevalent and popular.

 

[PatriceBergeronFan]

Can I miss a lot of the physicality, rawness and fights while simultaneously loving the increased speed, scoring and skill?

It certainly need not be one or the other. Which is the issue, some want only the direction the NHL has chosen. A blend would be ideal.

 

[GordonHowe]

The NHL must be chasing the NFL offense only, no touching QBs.

Chasing the NBA where scores are now 150 due to repetitive 3 pointer shots.

It believes soft, artificial, offense-only is the way to profit.

Fighting on the way out, hitting beginning to follow. A lacrosse style goal being about all the NHL has to cling to these days. Officials who are not worthy of ECHL levels, and have no grasp on the context of a game, utterly overwhelmed. A DoPS led by Parros of all fools where the only consistency is inconsistency.

Catering to predictable scripts via game management and whatever it was we saw in 2019 vs Blues or last postseason with Florida until the Vegas series.

The league desperately needs rivalries but fears them instead.

^

 

[GordonHowe]

The league has definitely sanitized the game and taken much of the fighting, and some of the hitting, out of it. What we now have is a rather emotionless but paradoxically somewhat more dangerous, regular season game of shinny. The playoffs are physical and an entirely different animal to the regular season. (The league still knows violence and high pace sells.)
The skills of the players are better than ever, the speed of the game has increased substantially without the red line, but the code of frontier justice is about gone and the league is much more dangerous and worse for it.
Players lack respect and concern for one another. It is a symptom of a societal problem that shows in a huge increase in hits to the head , from behind etc. The NHL knew this was coming as they have all but phased out the charging penalty over the last 40 years! But, I think the game has bitten off more than it can chew in terms of recklessness, danger and injury....It's a quality product but it has become, mostly thoughtless, dangerous, chippy and ugly.

Thank you. I completely agree with much of this. It is a far more dangerous, reckless game now, with little respect and even less accountability, for the reasons you list above. The league long ago snuffed out the ability of players to police their own game, which worked pretty well through much of its existence.

Now, "accountability" means going after an opponent for registering a wholly legal, clean hit. This bizarre, ubiquitous practice highlights the dysfunction of the contemporary NHL.

The red line should be reinstituted.

Oh and the countless f***ing plugs for the gambling.

Constantly in your face before, during, and after the game.

It’s exhausting.

It’s clear that this is where all of this is headed when it comes to pro sports.

38 y/o me be like:
View attachment 793848

"Gambling problem? Call 1-800 BET NOW."

 

[GordonHowe]

Today's players do not know how to protect themselves. They play under the assumption they won't be hit.

Our own Matt Poitras was guilty of this yesterday at the WJC. Late in a shift, tired, came across the blueline with possession. Instead of dumping the puck in an bracing for the oncoming hit, he decided to maintain possession and do a quick cut back where the oncoming defender still completed his check as it was too late to change course, and Poitras got rocked. Yeah the guy got a 2 min. minor for boarding. Wouldn't matter much if Poitras was seriously injured (which he could of been).

Earlier in the game, Morgan Geekie's younger brother Connor drilled a German defender with a perfectly clean hit.....by NA professional standards. Under IIHF rules, a hit to the head is a hit to the head. No gray area, no room for interpretation. Geekie basically got tossed because he's a larger player compared to the 5'11 defender he planted, and that defender did nothing to try and brace for the oncoming hit which was clearly coming straight towards him. We've taken all responsibility away from the player with the puck and put complete onus on the player trying to obtain the puck.

Now you have USA hockey basically eliminating "finishing your check" with it's recent rule changes on body checking. As soon as the player releases the puck, he cannot be legally hit. They don't need to brace for contact, because it's now illegal, at least in theory. But in reality you will never completely eradicate hits laid just after the player gets rid of the puck, the game is just too fast. So instead you'll just have a generation of players who don't know how or when to brace for contact.

A couple weeks ago I was watching a Penguins game and Sidney Crosby finished a hit on a Carolina D-man down in the corner of the Penguins offensive zone. Didn't knock the defender down or anything, but it allowed Crosby to beat that defender to the front of the net, where Crosby was available for a nice deflection goal. Someone needs to explain to me what was wrong with that play? How that particular play is somehow dangerous in minor hockey at checking levels?

Body-checking serves a purpose in this sport and to me is an integral part of the sport itself. I see it all the time at a adult rec level now. Guys who can dangle their way up the ice that if they were threatened with body contact, wouldn't have a chance to perform their flashy dekes and toe-drags. They can do those moves because there is no fear of getting rocked. I'm not advocating for body-contact at the adult rec level, just trying to illustrate how hockey with body contact is vastly different than hockey without it. Even the adult rec level has become WAY to sensitive to body contact and any sort of emotion.

The NHL has done a good job to reduce those blindside hits like the one that ended Marc Savard's career. But I feel we are and have been developing a generation of players who don't know how to anticipate or brace for contact in a contact sport, and overall, the sport is becoming more dangerous, not less, despite the ongoing crusade to eliminate emotion completely out of sports and society in general.

Wishing everyone here a happy new year!

100%. Excellent post, per usual.

The league brought in Bettman because revenues were not anywhere near on par with other major sports in the U.S. and hockey was very much a niche sport. And if we are honest, watching those games from the 70s, things I watched as a kid, it's kind of embarrassing, and easy to see why the sport was not catching on outside of its core markets.

That said. it seems like it has gone too far in the rush to get away from that image. But really, it hasn't been a rush, has it? It's been over 30 years now since Bettman has been at the helm, and we are seeing the fruits of the slow, steady change to soccer on ice and the diminishing of the things that made hockey unique among sports.

I would submit that the real change that is now driving this 'evolution' is the players. A generation of North American players now have grown up and learned the sport in the age of Bettman, and they are not bringing the same attitude and skillsets to the sport. They don't miss the old days of hockey because they have never know anything else. Who is left in the league that played when Bettman was not commissioner? No one and they've all come up well after his regime and direction was solidly entrenched.

Pushback against a sanitized sport is growing smaller and smaller with time. It makes me sad, but life is change, and I still love the sport and watching it, even if what I enjoy is different from how it was 20 years ago.

100%

 

[MarchysNoseKnows]

The red line should be reinstituted.

Madness

 

[Aussie Bruin]

Many won't agree with this but your pinning far too much blame on Bettman.

If we are being honest, he didn't even put in place the instigator rule which is by far the biggest change we've seen towards fisticuffs/intensity/emotion/etc. . It was Gil Stein during his brief time at the helm. Coincidentally a former Flyer's executive from the 1970s. When Bettman took over later in that season where the instigator came into effect (1992-93). Large scale brawls (leaving the bench) was banned in the late 1980s (1987). He did put in place the stiffer penalties for instigating fights in the final 5 mins.

Bettman brought in the "new NHL" rules to speed up the game coming out of the lockout. But that was done for the right reasons and doesn't seem like many are pushing for the return of the red line and clutch and grab hockey. One unintended consequence of this is the game got too fast for your stereotypical enforcer. You couldn't afford to dress a forward to play 3-4 mins a game whose only role was fight the other team's enforcer. And without an enforcer or fighter on both sides, the concept doesn't even work. When a young Brad Marchand was running around causing havoc, the other team's enforcer didn't go at the 5'9 Marchand. The other team's enforcer would say to Shawn Thornton "get Marchand to cut out the crap, or YOU (Thornton) will have to pay the price, not him (Marchand)". Doesn't work without a willing combatant on both sides.

The NHL doesn't market itself around fighting and fisticuffs. Can you blame them? No right minded sports organization would. Corporate sponsorship is vitally important to the health of the league overall. I don't recall the NHL marketing itself as fisticuffs on ice before Bettman either.

It's the grassroots level that has really changed. When I played minor hockey in Canada in the mid-1990s, a fight was an automatic week suspension. And describing minor hockey fights with two kids wearing metal face shields and wearing padded gloves a fight is still to me a bit of a stretch. I was suspended 3 times in during my time in minor hockey. The first time two punches were thrown (one by me and one by him) and we landed on top of one another. The 2nd time I was sucker-punched and as I was falling grabbed onto the guy and pulled him to the ice before it was broke up. Still in both cases got an automatic week suspension. Pretty stiff all things considered. And that was almost 30 years ago.

My father got involved in the local high school hockey back in the mid-2000s. While there, the league executive (which he was part of and agreed with) instituted a rule where you get in one fight, ONE, you were done with high school hockey for the year. Doesn't matter the circumstances. Doesn't matter if the idiot ref called what should of been a roughing minor a fighting major. No recourse for the player to appeal either. When he told me this at the supper table (and I wasn't a player at that point, too old), we almost came to blows I disagreed with the league's new rule wholeheartedly. I don't agree with putting a kids season on the line because he could be defending himself from an aggressive player. And that's almost 20 years ago.

A co-worker of mine was formally involved with the provincial governing body for hockey where I live. We had a (friendly) discussion a few weeks ago about the sport at the grassroots level and their comment to me was the overall sentiment now is the "old school" mentality that myself and many others here still possess has no place in youth hockey anymore. What was once a "working-class" sport has now become gentrified and richer, more conservative-thinking parents who are now the ones on the committees and minor hockey executives making decisions and modifying the rules. My co-worker told me a story about a kid who called another kid a "word for a cat" at the face-off dot. The kid was ejected from the game and had to go in front of a panel of adults to explain his actions to get to play again. Even trash talking isn't tolerated anymore.

The emotion is being sucked out of the NHL game because the players entering the league grew up playing in a much different environment than did the players of yester-year. It's the grassroots level that is constantly changing. The NHL product is just seeing the consequences of it.

That last point I think is very accurate and significant. I don't think it's the only factor determining how the game is shaping up these days, but it's easily one of the most impactful. Sport reflects society, and it reflects the people who play it. The young men of today have grown up in a vastly different environment and been taught some very different lessons about what it means to be a man and what sorts of conduct are acceptable. It's inevitable that the effects of this will bleed into pro sport just as it's also changing many other professions.

Look at a guy like Charlie McAvoy. Big body, can handle himself, isn't afraid to play tough and hard. But he doesn't really have a mean bone in his body. He's a lover not a fighter. Piss him off enough and yeah he'll push back, but it's not his natural inclination to get physical or aggressive with opponents for no or little reason. And that's the norm now. Someone like Tom Wilson who still thrives on that old-school jock/alpha male mentality is a dinosaur who's kind will only become ever rarer.

The league of course has for the most part only exacerbated this trend with the way the game is officiated, particularly around roughing, fights etc., and the relative lack of games between divisional and conference rivals. They could look to change direction on some of that stuff and to encourage some of the truculence and mutual dislike back into the game that otherwise won't happen as organically as it once would. But that feels unlikely, for a variety of reasons. The alternative is to lean more into and promote those assets that are developing more and more in recent times - the speed, skills, athleticism and endurance of the modern player. Which they are doing, but messily and with a certain level of incoherence that means the game isn't being managed and presented anywhere near as well as it could be. A lot could be improved in that regard.

 

[GordonHowe]

NHL course corrected coming out of the lockout to eliminate the clutching and grabbing of the Trap Era.

MLB eliminated the shift and instituted the pitch clock.

You can never “go back”, but there are ways to recapture the heart of what a sport “should be”.

I hope you're right. I'd like to think so.

 

[Babajingo]

IMO it all started with Magic/Larry but really started with MJ (and Gretz to a lesser extent). The players, owners, league, venues, merchandisers, networks, sponsors all figured that the game was a product that they all benefit from, if promoted right. That model just trickled down to the other leagues.

Just listen to a broadcast, every player is the best at something. They rarely criticize anymore.
I always wonder how Howard Cosell would do in this current environment.

I used to watch Football, Baseball and Hockey all the time. Now it's just Hockey. I can't stand the constant adds in football. The beauty of baseball is the strategy. Its all about situations. But the analysts never talk about that. It's just propping the product.

I'm part of the old man group

 

[GordonHowe]

To think that it was just 10-12 years ago I’d leave work 5 minutes early to rush home to watch a Bruins/Habs game because you just knew it would be a barn burner filled with emotion and hatred for one another.

That’s something I miss greatly. Today I feel like players are just going through the motions for the most part.

Despite the Bruins record and them being on top of the east for the most part, I’ve probably only truly been entertained by 2-3 games this year, which sucks.

Give us more divisional games and axe one of the two games against western conference teams. Give me another game against Montreal, Toronto, Florida etc over a game against Arizona.

I’ve learned to accept the fact that the one dimensional goon is gone, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the occasional game. Watching the Leafs 4th line of McLaren and Orr terrorize teams was hilarious.

Lack of divisional play is part of this, too, as you point out.

Bettman on the league's vision going forward:

"See, every team has to play every other team. Growing the game in non-traditional markets is our priority. It's what makes our sport unique and exciting for our fans. NHL fans are the best, most knowledgeable fans in sports.

"Boston against Montreal more than twice a year is too niche. It's too parochial. Frankly, it's a snore.

"Our younger fans don't know where Montreal is. Where is it? They don't care. It doesn't move the needle. They want goals. They want Connor Bedard. We're giving them what they want.

"We're very excited about Arizona this season."

They got their wish. A bloated, bloodless 32 game league. Congratulations.

 

[Dr Hook]

Many won't agree with this but your pinning far too much blame on Bettman.

If we are being honest, he didn't even put in place the instigator rule which is by far the biggest change we've seen towards fisticuffs/intensity/emotion/etc. . It was Gil Stein during his brief time at the helm. Coincidentally a former Flyer's executive from the 1970s. When Bettman took over later in that season where the instigator came into effect (1992-93). Large scale brawls (leaving the bench) was banned in the late 1980s (1987). He did put in place the stiffer penalties for instigating fights in the final 5 mins.

Bettman brought in the "new NHL" rules to speed up the game coming out of the lockout. But that was done for the right reasons and doesn't seem like many are pushing for the return of the red line and clutch and grab hockey. One unintended consequence of this is the game got too fast for your stereotypical enforcer. You couldn't afford to dress a forward to play 3-4 mins a game whose only role was fight the other team's enforcer. And without an enforcer or fighter on both sides, the concept doesn't even work. When a young Brad Marchand was running around causing havoc, the other team's enforcer didn't go at the 5'9 Marchand. The other team's enforcer would say to Shawn Thornton "get Marchand to cut out the crap, or YOU (Thornton) will have to pay the price, not him (Marchand)". Doesn't work without a willing combatant on both sides.

The NHL doesn't market itself around fighting and fisticuffs. Can you blame them? No right minded sports organization would. Corporate sponsorship is vitally important to the health of the league overall. I don't recall the NHL marketing itself as fisticuffs on ice before Bettman either.

It's the grassroots level that has really changed. When I played minor hockey in Canada in the mid-1990s, a fight was an automatic week suspension. And describing minor hockey fights with two kids wearing metal face shields and wearing padded gloves a fight is still to me a bit of a stretch. I was suspended 3 times in during my time in minor hockey. The first time two punches were thrown (one by me and one by him) and we landed on top of one another. The 2nd time I was sucker-punched and as I was falling grabbed onto the guy and pulled him to the ice before it was broke up. Still in both cases got an automatic week suspension. Pretty stiff all things considered. And that was almost 30 years ago.

My father got involved in the local high school hockey back in the mid-2000s. While there, the league executive (which he was part of and agreed with) instituted a rule where you get in one fight, ONE, you were done with high school hockey for the year. Doesn't matter the circumstances. Doesn't matter if the idiot ref called what should of been a roughing minor a fighting major. No recourse for the player to appeal either. When he told me this at the supper table (and I wasn't a player at that point, too old), we almost came to blows I disagreed with the league's new rule wholeheartedly. I don't agree with putting a kids season on the line because he could be defending himself from an aggressive player. And that's almost 20 years ago.

A co-worker of mine was formally involved with the provincial governing body for hockey where I live. We had a (friendly) discussion a few weeks ago about the sport at the grassroots level and their comment to me was the overall sentiment now is the "old school" mentality that myself and many others here still possess has no place in youth hockey anymore. What was once a "working-class" sport has now become gentrified and richer, more conservative-thinking parents who are now the ones on the committees and minor hockey executives making decisions and modifying the rules. My co-worker told me a story about a kid who called another kid a "word for a cat" at the face-off dot. The kid was ejected from the game and had to go in front of a panel of adults to explain his actions to get to play again. Even trash talking isn't tolerated anymore.

The emotion is being sucked out of the NHL game because the players entering the league grew up playing in a much different environment than did the players of yester-year. It's the grassroots level that is constantly changing. The NHL product is just seeing the consequences of it.

I think a lot of this is right- and to clarify, since you put up such a thoughtful post, I perhaps should have said Bettman and the owners. He is a convenient figurehead, but there is no denying he was brought into grow the game so that the owners could make more money. One of the ways to do that was certainly to make the game more free-flowing and skill-oriented and also to take a lot of the violence out. It takes time to do that- they couldn't suspend every player, or play entire games on the PP/PK which is what they would have had to do. Instead, the culture gtradually changed and I do think it was deliberate. But as with everything, there is no single reason. It is a lot things, including a changing broader culture more oriented towards safety. I could liken it to the wearing of bike helmets, which I certainly did not wear, nor any of my friends. Now you rarely see kids without them.

 

[BruinDust]

That last point I think is very accurate and significant. I don't think it's the only factor determining how the game is shaping up these days, but it's easily one of the most impactful. Sport reflects society, and it reflects the people who play it. The young men of today have grown up in a vastly different environment and been taught some very different lessons about what it means to be a man and what sorts of conduct are acceptable. It's inevitable that the effects of this will bleed into pro sport just as it's also changing many other professions.

Look at a guy like Charlie McAvoy. Big body, can handle himself, isn't afraid to play tough and hard. But he doesn't really have a mean bone in his body. He's a lover not a fighter. Piss him off enough and yeah he'll push back, but it's not his natural inclination to get physical or aggressive with opponents for no or little reason. And that's the norm now. Someone like Tom Wilson who still thrives on that old-school jock/alpha male mentality is a dinosaur who's kind will only become ever rarer.

The league of course has for the most part only exacerbated this trend with the way the game is officiated, particularly around roughing, fights etc., and the relative lack of games between divisional and conference rivals. They could look to change direction on some of that stuff and to encourage some of the truculence and mutual dislike back into the game that otherwise won't happen as organically as it once would. But that feels unlikely, for a variety of reasons. The alternative is to lean more into and promote those assets that are developing more and more in recent times - the speed, skills, athleticism and endurance of the modern player. Which they are doing, but messily and with a certain level of incoherence that means the game isn't being managed and presented anywhere near as well as it could be. A lot could be improved in that regard.

Great points. Sport does reflect society and it's not just hockey that is experience these sorts of changes. We've seen it in other sports, we've seen it in entertainment/television/movies, we've seen it in the music industry, etc. At my employer's workplace we have a "respect week" and my team did a video skit comparing what an internal meeting looked like in 1970s and what one looked like today. Let's just say the two meetings were vastly different in tone.

Sometimes I feel the league is in a no-win situation when it comes to rivalries. They went to a more divisional format in the playoffs to promote rivalries, yet every playoff year people cry and whine about getting their precious 1-8 format back (which never really existed BTW but I digress).
If they went to a schedule with heavy divisional play, people complain about seeing the same match-ups over and over. Even then, there is no guarantee it would create any sort of vitriol between the two teams. I do think there are times when the linesmen jump in too early into the scrum when they should just let the two players go and get it out of their system.