THN.com Blog: Removing red line did more harm than good
Breakaway duels, like this one between Ryan Miller and Tomas Plekanec, haven't been as prevalent as the NHL hoped when it removed the red line.
Ken Campbell
2007-11-30 12:55:07
As scoring in the NHL continues to drop like a rock – I mean, will Roberto Luongo ever let in another freakin' goal? – the NHL is once again faced with something of a crisis in terms of its entertainment value.
No league has altered its product more dramatically than the NHL has in the past few seasons, but none of it has resulted in the explosion of offense everyone hoped for after the league came out of the lockout.
When the NHL made the bold move of removing the red line, almost all of the hockey world was clearly in favor of the change. But there was a small, quiet faction that wondered whether the move might be doing more harm than good to the product.
Well, as far as I'm concerned, the verdict is in and removing the red line has been a failure.
None of us has anything more than anecdotal evidence on this one, but I believe that removing the center red line has stifled far more chances than it has created.
The long stretch passes that sprung talented forwards for breakaways are almost non-existent now. Instead, they've been replaced by a line of defenders in the neutral zone that has formed because teams are scared to death about giving up the breakaway pass.
And now people are talking about making the ice bigger, which I believe would not contribute one iota to creating more offense. Ask anyone who has scouted Europe extensively and they'll tell you that the big ice surface with no red line has created games that often have the spectators looking for knitting needles to poke into their eyes.
Shots that look like they might be from a scoring area are not even dangerous and having more ice gives slow-footed defensemen more room to angle off forwards trying to beat them to the outside.
Clearly coaches have adjusted to the new NHL. On a game on TSN Wednesday night, future Toronto Maple Leafs president Glenn Healy was going on glowingly about the New York Islanders and their ability to get the puck in deep, 200 feet away from their own net, but not even try to create any offense.
There were 9,211 people at that game.
That, of course, was the bogus "announced" attendance, meaning the real head count was more like 7,000.
When the Islanders play like that, is there any wonder why?
To be sure, the league once again faces a monumental task in increasing excitement. It could go the easy route and make the nets bigger, although that won't create a single additional scoring chance.
Or it could admit that it made a mistake by taking out the red line and put it back in effective next season.
patrick tunnock (Posted 2007-12-03 00:18:26)
To Joe Willix, you hit it right on the money. Goalies were never really shrunk, they are still hugh compared to goalies in any other generation. Look at the scoring chances in the classic games, players could score from all over the place, today only a perfect shot finds the net. All the great scorers say the key is to see the back of the net and in todays game there is not much to see. So scale down the goalies big time and watch the goals increase dramatically. The NHL fixed the flow of the game, but failed with smaller goalies. This fix requires no major alterations to the game, please NHL just try it.
Jordan Vinsorg (Posted 2007-12-02 02:46:27)
The game is fine. I'm tired of hearing whiny analyists complain that scoring is down. Why can't people just enjoy the sport for what it is?
Ryan Packer (Posted 2007-12-02 01:00:24)
After watching some gold medal games between Russia and the Czech Republic, I was praying the NHL wouldn't make their game more European. During the world junior gold medal game (2000 or 2001), the Czechs and Russians played the whole game with their defensemen on their OWN bluelines to prevent stretch passes. When they had a powerplay, they kept one d-man on their own blueline. It was the worst game I ever saw and really felt embarrassed for both teams. Please don't make the ice bigger because scoring will get even lower!
Thadd Corbett (Posted 2007-12-01 22:31:36)
To be honest, I was angry when the NHL started changing the rules so much, but it's needed. We don't want hockey to turn into football, where people can go nuts over a 4-1 or 4-2 game. Not trying to bash football. It's a great sport. But hockey is definatly where it's at.
I think that things would definatly look different and maybe even better if they decided that the red line's only use was for faceoffs after a goal is scored. Heck they could get rid of the line and just leave the circle there. After that we get rid of the touch-up icing rule. Without a redline to get an icing call you'd have to shoot the puck out of YOUR zone, into theirs and all the way to the back boards pretty much.
That's deliberate enough that the defensemen shouldn't have to risk injury or tucker themselves out running back all the time. Later in the year and in the playoffs defensemen who're used to logging 22+ minutes a game won't look nearly as dead tired.
Joe Willix (Posted 2007-12-01 19:03:11)
Removing the red line hasn't done nearly as much damage to scoring as the increase in size of the goaltender's gear. Look at a picture of Dominik Hasek in Chicago and then look at a picture of him now and tell me if maybe it's harder to get goals past a guy who's wearing the inflatable sumo wrestler outfit from the intermission show under his sweater. Saying the size of pads has been reduced is incorrect. The size has been reduced from when it got REALLY ridiculous in the late 90s. You reduce the size of the pads, WITHOUT changing the nets, WITHOUT increases the rink size, WITHOUT putting the red line back in, you'll have more goals.
Quagmire (Posted 2007-12-01 15:58:16)
Um, pardon me if I missed something, but the red line IS STILL THERE. The NHL simply started allowing 2-line passes, that's all.
T.J. Don (Posted 2007-12-01 13:38:51)
Why not make the offensive zone bigger? Blue line in...red line out. With more room to work the puck offensively maybe we'll see more chances and less cycling behind the net.
Gary Blackburn (Posted 2007-12-01 12:11:27)
You want to open up the game and score more? Remove the two line pass rule entirely and treat the blue lines like the 10 second line in basketball. Suddenly you have hoops-style fast breaks. Whoa! I can hear the old timers thudding to the floor as I type!
yanick julien (Posted 2007-12-01 01:42:13)
They want more offense.In the past, it was a rule that it was banished cause Montreal canadiens scores too many goals....A team must take the full length penalties...how many goals they scores....or...the team in shorthanded must get to the red line to clear the puck....but my favorite one is the first one....
Jim Ziccarelli (Posted 2007-11-30 23:48:56)
Does anyone else seem to understand that no matter what rule changes are made, coaches will find a way to defend it and that these players will work hard to not be embarassed? They put a limit on the size of goalie pads and opened up the offensive zone - a great idea to create more goals, right? Now we're upset that Roberto Luongo is stopping all of those shots. The guy worked hard on his angles and is now more prepared and is used to the changes. Take the red line out and now we have a neutral zone trap. Would you rather your favorite team didn't care and didn't try to protect against the things that work? Do you expect each team to not try their hardest to win? No matter what rules are put in, teams will find a way to defend against the chances it creates. Leave the game alone for once and see what happens. Another question - if your team is winning, do you give a damn how they do it?
Steve Lepore (Posted 2007-11-30 18:40:25)
Yay, Crazy old Canadian Crumudgeon wants something changed again! Big shocker.
Michael Krogmann (Posted 2007-11-30 17:13:20)
Lemme get this straight. Teams are clogging up the neutral zone to prevent long bombs, so the solution is to put the red line back in? Weren't teams clogging the neutral zone just as much before?
Call the damn rules. Everybody talks about how hard hockey players work, but a hook from behind is about the laziest play possible. If NHL-style officiating came to the NFL, cornerbacks could tackle wide receivers at the snap or simply grab their jerseys when the ball was in the air. Then we'd have a bunch of 10-7 games featuring repeated runs up the gut. But it would be such a "tough" and "hard-working" game!
When guys get grabbed or hooked, it totally kills speed and momentum. But because so many people confuse obstruction with grit, they think it belongs.
After the lockout, there were so many complaints that power plays were overwhelming the game. Really? It's the officials' fault that players can't figure out what's illegal and stop doing it? Ridiculous. Call the games tightly and make power plays run the full two minutes every time. If teams can't adjust and spend the whole game in the box, tough.
If there was any strength, influence or leadership at the top of this league, this could be resolved. Instead, the NHL is basically a floundering company run by a CEO who's in over his head and has no idea how to stop the bleeding.
Ron Cook (Posted 2007-11-30 15:59:05)
The main thing i like about no red line is less stoppages of play. To me the games have been more exciting this year and guess what...fighting is back. Plus here in chicago we are starting to become a hockey city again! Home games on tv, players being interviewed on local sports radio. Stuff like this hasn't happened in years.
Bruno Falardeau (Posted 2007-11-30 14:50:19)
Thank you for expressing my concerns regarding the removal of the red line. A danger in implementing so many changes to the game at the same time, such as was done after the lock-out, is that if globally the result ends up being satisfying, one can be led to think that every change was an improvement.
I think the crackdown on obstruction and the return of the tag-up offside did wonders for the gameflow. Shoot-outs are a delightful show, despite the fact that awarding three points for any game that goes to overtime has decreased scoring in the third period during tight games and increased the amount of overtime games.
However, these great changes were offset somewhat by changes having negative impacts. I found it ludicruous at the time that the NHL considered removing the red line to "beat the trap". As far as I know, the infamous trap is the single most efficient strategy to "beat the long pass", removing the red line encourages the trap simply because it makes it that much more efficient compared to all of the other defensive strategies. It took a couple of years for teams to adapt, and now we're back to square zero.
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