Too much space behind the net...1998-2004

[blamebettman*]

One thing that really sticks out when watching games from that era was how much space there was behind the net. I suppose I grew used to it as the era was unfolding...but looking back now it looks almost comical. Positively idiotic that there would be that much space BEHIND the net.

Gretzky had his office back there...but I'm not sure why the NHL thought it would increase scoring by adding more room to an area where it's extremely hard to score from/ And if a defenseman had a guy pinned back there, it made it all that much more difficult to center the puck for a scoring chance.

 

[Crease]

I've heard arguments both ways and I think it's true that with less space behind the net it becomes easier for forwards to escape their checks.

 

[Sojourn]

I've heard arguments both ways and I think it's true that with less space behind the net it becomes easier for forwards to escape their checks.

I think that can work in the favor of the defending team, too, at least on the breakout. Some of the more gifted skating defensemen can use the net as a get out of jail free card, by using it as a screen, getting some speed going, and getting separation from attacking forwards.

 

[Big Phil]

Yeah, it's the NHL. They were stupid then too. Maybe stupider, if that is possible. Up until 1998 Brian Burke was doing the job Shanahan is doing today. He was a huge proponent of the crease rule. Yeah, THAT rule. No matter how many times we saw this happen where a player's foot was in the crease - even in the playoffs - Burke was adamant that the players would eventually get the picture. This was a dark time for hockey in many ways. It made scoring drop like a rock. It took the flow out of the game and the refs would review a goal if a player was so much within a square mile of the crease. Not to mention if the ref didn't go upstairs for a review - the nerve - the video review would call down to tell them there was no goal. If Pat Burns were alive he'd tell you how he practically lost a playoff series because of that rule. Boston had an overtime goal called back in 1998 against Washington. And Burke STILL supported the rule. This all changed after Hull's goal in 1999 when it went back to normal after a 3 year hiatus but starting the 1998-'99 season there were a whole new set of "fresh" ideas to increase scoring.

This was one of them. Yeah, laugh if you want, but they really thought scoring would improve if they made more space BEHIND the net, and shrunk the space in the neutral zone. Yeah.............I know. It didn't work at all and it was a lousy idea to begin with. The crease rule was in effect for one more year, clutching and grabbing was at an all-time high, goaltending equipment was bloated but this was their master plan. A bunch of suits thought this would make the game better.

So whenever you complain that a puck over the glass play results in a penalty (and I personally think an unintentional puck over the glass should be treated as an icing call where the team that did it can't change rather than a penalty) just remember that the NHL has stuck with even dumber ideas than this.

 

[Killion]

Yeah, it's the NHL. They were stupid then too.... they really thought scoring would improve if they made more space BEHIND the net, and shrunk the space in the neutral zone.

I approve this post. Its absurd. Move the damn goal line & nets back already, get rid of the idiotic trapezoid, and better be revisiting the removal of the centre ice red-line while their at it because with more room & speed, its resulting in open ice career ending hits to the talent.

 

[mbhhofr]

All the years that I was involved in hockey, the space from the goal line to the end boards was always 10 feet. When they moved it out to 13 feet because of Gretzky, my immediate thought was there is only one Gretzky and I felt it was a dumb move. Goals are scored from in front of the net, not from behind. How many times did you see the three forwards from the attacking team all behind the goal line at the same time? Too many times from my observation.

 

[reckoning]

It was supposedly to help increase goalscoring, and it was approved of by most of the experts at The Hockey News and the rest of the hockey media. The thinking was "look at how many goals Gretzky set up from back there", ignoring the fact that Gretzky did a lot of things nobody else could, and he never needed extra space back there anyway.

Another of the league's attempts to increase the number of goals but ended up backfiring. Much like their idea of giving a team a point for losing in OT. It was supposed to make teams take more chances in OT to go for the win, but resulted in teams playing more conservative and defensive in games that were tied in the third period, in order to protect the single point.

 

[Andrew Knoll]

It was supposedly to help increase goalscoring, and it was approved of by most of the experts at The Hockey News and the rest of the hockey media. The thinking was "look at how many goals Gretzky set up from back there", ignoring the fact that Gretzky did a lot of things nobody else could, and he never needed extra space back there anyway.

Another of the league's attempts to increase the number of goals but ended up backfiring. Much like their idea of giving a team a point for losing in OT. It was supposed to make teams take more chances in OT to go for the win, but resulted in teams playing more conservative and defensive in games that were tied in the third period, in order to protect the single point.

If you look at it though, more of the game is played behind the net than ever today. It's not so much about imitating Gretzky as being able to place the puck there more easily than other parts of the offensive zone. The whole idea today is working from back there and setting up some kind of opportunity in tight.

I'd be curious to see how increased space would affect today's game, actually.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

If you look at it though, more of the game is played behind the net than ever today. It's not so much about imitating Gretzky as being able to place the puck there more easily than other parts of the offensive zone. The whole idea today is working from back there and setting up some kind of opportunity in tight.

I'd be curious to see how increased space would affect today's game, actually.

I think it would probably decrease offense. Teams today are better than ever at choking off shooting lanes in their own zone. How many times do we hear that X team took 65 shots at the net, but only 25 made it through to the goalie? If you took away three more feet of space between the blueline and goal line it would be even less territory to cover defensively.

 

[MS]

It was supposedly to help increase goalscoring, and it was approved of by most of the experts at The Hockey News and the rest of the hockey media. The thinking was "look at how many goals Gretzky set up from back there", ignoring the fact that Gretzky did a lot of things nobody else could, and he never needed extra space back there anyway.

Another of the league's attempts to increase the number of goals but ended up backfiring. Much like their idea of giving a team a point for losing in OT. It was supposed to make teams take more chances in OT to go for the win, but resulted in teams playing more conservative and defensive in games that were tied in the third period, in order to protect the single point.

Exactly. The idiocy was mindnumbing.

"Gretzky creates goals from back there, so more space will mean more goals!"

Completely not understanding that Gretzky creating goals from back there had absolutely nothing to do with the amount of space, and everything to do with his ability to use the goal net as a shield and sucker defenders into leaving their man in front to chase him and then being able to go out the other side.

In the meantime, they decided that they'd deal with the clogging up of the neutral zone by making it smaller and cramming more players into it.

The fact that the people making these decisions had such a poor grasp of how the game actually worked is incredibly troubling.

__________

As for the man in the crease rule, the logic there was equally flawed.

There was a spike in goaltender injuries in 1995-96 and the resulting Chicken Little hysteria over it. So the league had the knee-jerk reaction of the crease rule in order to 'protect the goalies'.

Problem was, virtually none of the injuries to goalies that year were as a result of circumstances that the crease rule would 'prevent'. It was just one of those random things - guys tearing groins doing the splits, Richter had his hand stepped on when he was way out of the crease, and so on. The one watershed event that really caused the rule was Nick Kypreos intentionally falling on Grant Fuhr and hurting Fuhr's knee .... but in that instance the puck was already in the crease and under Fuhr, so if a goal would have been scored out of it under the new rule, it would have still counted.

So we ended up stuck with this idiotic rule for 3 years for absolutely no reason at all. Just horrendous leadership from the GMs and Board of Governers.

 

[Nalens Oga]

Moving the net forward aka creating more room in fairness did move the net closer to the blue-line thereby decreasing the distance that a player needs to skate on say a breakaway or how far Al McInnis' slapshot needs to go in order to score.

 

[Big Phil]

As for the man in the crease rule, the logic there was equally flawed.

There was a spike in goaltender injuries in 1995-96 and the resulting Chicken Little hysteria over it. So the league had the knee-jerk reaction of the crease rule in order to 'protect the goalies'.

Problem was, virtually none of the injuries to goalies that year were as a result of circumstances that the crease rule would 'prevent'. It was just one of those random things - guys tearing groins doing the splits, Richter had his hand stepped on when he was way out of the crease, and so on. The one watershed event that really caused the rule was Nick Kypreos intentionally falling on Grant Fuhr and hurting Fuhr's knee .... but in that instance the puck was already in the crease and under Fuhr, so if a goal would have been scored out of it under the new rule, it would have still counted.

So we ended up stuck with this idiotic rule for 3 years for absolutely no reason at all. Just horrendous leadership from the GMs and Board of Governers.

I still have a lot of disdain for Brian Burke to this day for constantly promoting that rule. It was an attitude he took to the Maple Leafs with him. The whole "I will never admit that what I did didn't work out" type of mentality. This is when I really looked at the NHL at a time and said "How can they NOT see this is hurting the game". Yet they did nothing. It may have been the first moment where I realized just how much the NHL didn't care about their product. Fast forward to a much better run league like the NFL. Yeah, the replacement refs did a bad job this year while the real refs were holding out. But the second that horrible endzone call that cost the Packers the game against Seattle happened there was a deal struck by the league two days later.

What makes a truly great league great is knowing when they've screwed up and quickly fixing it. This is not a staple of the NHL.

 

[Killion]

Exactly. The idiocy was mindnumbing... So we ended up stuck with this idiotic rule for 3 years for absolutely no reason at all. Just horrendous leadership from the GMs and Board of Governers.

Indeed, agree wholeheartedly, and very well said. I also believe they should dispense with the truncated half circle radial crease & return it to its square dimensions, obviously remove the trapezoid entirely, moving the goal line & nets back to 10' out from the boards. Seriously messed up in re-configuring the surface lines in the manner they have. Its really pretty outrageous if you seriously consider it, the myopia, just the entire ignorance of it, mindblowing.

 

[90s Hockey fan]

My dream is to see the NHL return to the rules/ice markings of the 96-97 season sans the crease rule.

Big neutral zones that allowed players to build up speed and make plays in the neutral zone.

 

[Sojourn]

Moving the net forward aka creating more room in fairness did move the net closer to the blue-line thereby decreasing the distance that a player needs to skate on say a breakaway or how far Al McInnis' slapshot needs to go in order to score.

I'm not sure the advantage is what you think it is. A 100 mph slapshot will travel about 146 feet per second. That means, from the blue line, it's reaching the goal line in about 2/5's of a second(NHL goalies are awesome). That's a rough estimate, but the general idea is that plus or minus 3 feet is fairly insignificant in that context.

On the other hand, if the blue line stays in the same spot, moving the goal line three feet forward also removes three feet in front of the net. On an NHL rink that works out to be 255 cubic feet of space the attacking team no longer has to work with. That number is a bit more noteworthy.

 

[Killion]

... On the other hand, if the blue line stays in the same spot, moving the goal line three feet forward also removes three feet in front of the net. On an NHL rink that works out to be 255 cubic feet of space the attacking team no longer has to work with. That number is a bit more noteworthy.

Ya, absolutely, and with increased size & speed that loss of space is critical, turning the face-off circles on the cycle, slot & top of the crease, one step over the blue lines with the now removal of the centre ice red into a Kill Zone. Players dont have enough room to check, angle 2 or 3 man rushes into the boards so instead they "hit", right through the guy, no thought to actually stripping the puck off the guys stick, just knocking him off it, down, regardless of whether or not he's released it. Finishing the check. Driving him into next week. So you get shoot in's, then constant cycle down low.

 

[LeBlondeDemon10]

On the other hand, if the blue line stays in the same spot, moving the goal line three feet forward also removes three feet in front of the net. On an NHL rink that works out to be 255 cubic feet of space the attacking team no longer has to work with. That number is a bit more noteworthy.

Ever notice how the traditional 'slot' has disappeared from our current game? The place where Espo, Bossy and Kerr parked themselves and scored. This is because of the extra space behind the net. The new 'slot' appears to be along the halfboards where Ovi and Stamkos often score from.

Big Phil - Interesting idea about the no penalty for unintentionally shooting the puck over the glass. I am just wondering how many times that actually happens per game. Also, intentional and unintentional is a murky area for the NHL. They have historically attempted to wash their hands of defining these two terms when it comes to injuries. Shanahan has made some progress though. Do you think the shooting the puck over the glass rule can stand to be a judgment call without creating some controversy?

 

[MS]

Big Phil - Interesting idea about the no penalty for unintentionally shooting the puck over the glass. I am just wondering how many times that actually happens per game. Also, intentional and unintentional is a murky area for the NHL. They have historically attempted to wash their hands of defining these two terms when it comes to injuries. Shanahan has made some progress though. Do you think the shooting the puck over the glass rule can stand to be a judgment call without creating some controversy?

It was never controversial before, really.

Players would rarely shoot the puck over the glass on purpose, and when they did, it was usually pretty obvious.

The reason it became a 'controversy' is because there were so many ex-goalies serving as colour commentators who would whinge about how unfair it was that goalies were penalized in the same situation. And they raised the profile of what should have been a non-issue.

So instead of getting rid of the dumb goalie penalty, they gave an even dumber penalty to everyone.

The rule just makes no sense. There are any number of ways to intentionally cause a whistle - icing the puck, falling on the puck, intentionally going offside, goalies freezing the puck. And this one way gets singled out as automatic penalty? It's basically exactly the same as icing and should be treated as such.

And the really ridiculous thing is that with the rule in place, every penalty is for doing it accidentally. I want to see games decided based on the skill of the teams involved, not because of a ridiculous over-punishment for the most minor offense possible. The current rule is like 2 years in jail for jaywalking.

 

[Sojourn]

Ever notice how the traditional 'slot' has disappeared from our current game? The place where Espo, Bossy and Kerr parked themselves and scored. This is because of the extra space behind the net. The new 'slot' appears to be along the halfboards where Ovi and Stamkos often score from.

I think a lot of that has to do with a change in philosophy defensively. Teams are collapsing in the D zone, and take away everything in the middle of the ice. Defense, like goaltending, has become a percentages game. Take away the middle, and give teams the perimeter.

On top of that, you have the great protective gear that players have these days, which allows them to get into shooting lanes to block shots.

The game has changed.

 

[The Kingslayer]

you could drive a Greg Sherman tanke behind the net back then. Paul Kariya hated that their was so much room behind the net.

 

[mbhhofr]

The current rule is like 2 years in jail for jaywalking.

Then don't jaywalk.

 

[Tough Guy]

I still have a lot of disdain for Brian Burke to this day for constantly promoting that rule. It was an attitude he took to the Maple Leafs with him. The whole "I will never admit that what I did didn't work out" type of mentality. This is when I really looked at the NHL at a time and said "How can they NOT see this is hurting the game". Yet they did nothing. It may have been the first moment where I realized just how much the NHL didn't care about their product. Fast forward to a much better run league like the NFL. Yeah, the replacement refs did a bad job this year while the real refs were holding out. But the second that horrible endzone call that cost the Packers the game against Seattle happened there was a deal struck by the league two days later.

What makes a truly great league great is knowing when they've screwed up and quickly fixing it. This is not a staple of the NHL.

I'll always hate Burke for the crease rule. The guy is a total ****** bag.

 

[Killion]

Then don't jaywalk.

I dont. Im goin down, Im goin down big. Why do anything
half assed when whole assed is so much more satisfying?

 

[MS]

Then don't jaywalk.

Misses the point completely.

If the league put in a 2 minute penalty for going offside, you could give the lame response 'well, then don't go offside'.

But that wouldn't change the fact that rule was a stupid one.

Same with the puck over the glass rule. The punishment far outweighs the crime, and games are decided based on that stupid punishment rather than the abilities of the teams.

 

[mbhhofr]

Misses the point completely.

If the league put in a 2 minute penalty for going offside, you could give the lame response 'well, then don't go offside'.

But that wouldn't change the fact that rule was a stupid one.

Same with the puck over the glass rule. The punishment far outweighs the crime, and games are decided based on that stupid punishment rather than the abilities of the teams.

I think it's a very appropriate rule. You really don't have any idea the number of times that a player or goalie would intentionally shoot the puck over the glass to get a stoppage of play when the pressure was on them. If it happened at one end of the rink and the referee made the decision that it wasn't intentional, the non offending team would b**ch about it. Two minutes later it happened at the other end of the rink and the referee gives a player two minutes for intentionally doing it and the penalized team is b**ching about it again. Now, there is no question whether it's intentional or not. It's a penalty and all the players know it.

So, as I said, "Don't jaywalk."