Thursday, February 19, 2004
Down at Center Ice
From a letter to friend Bill A.
And, as to "StatBoni" itself, my "man on the inside", Chip tells me there
are other plans afoot to _fix_ the ranking system: e.g.
What they (the NHL) are trying to do is break the hold that "The Trap",
a defensive strategy employed at center ice has on the game. Since the
NJ Devils won the Cup in '95 with this style, the scores have been going
down, and according to league managment, so is fan interest. An "obvious"
solution is to make the rink wider and deeper, making it harder to
employ some of the tactics. But this solution digs into the big revenue seats.
First blush; some people have figured out that if you increase the rink area
you increase the perimeter, _and_ the number of seats at rink-side. Big
problem, is that many/most of the big revenue teams (read MSG, NY Rangers)
are in buildings that all you can do is take out seats from sold-out
performances. Why would you do that?
So that is the nature of the current impasse. Other tinkering is about
to happen: the goal tender can't go behind the net to play the puck.
< DIG >
This idea is so lame, if the NHL ruling were applied to chess, it would
be equivalent to saying "The King may move, but not capture!" You'd
have to change the name of the game from Chess to something like
"Neutered", or "Queens".
< /DIG >
And, as to "StatBoni" itself, my "man on the inside", Chip tells me there
are other plans afoot to _fix_ the ranking system: e.g.
regulation win = 3
ot win = 2
ot tie, loss = 1
What they (the NHL) are trying to do is break the hold that "The Trap",
a defensive strategy employed at center ice has on the game. Since the
NJ Devils won the Cup in '95 with this style, the scores have been going
down, and according to league managment, so is fan interest. An "obvious"
solution is to make the rink wider and deeper, making it harder to
employ some of the tactics. But this solution digs into the big revenue seats.
First blush; some people have figured out that if you increase the rink area
you increase the perimeter, _and_ the number of seats at rink-side. Big
problem, is that many/most of the big revenue teams (read MSG, NY Rangers)
are in buildings that all you can do is take out seats from sold-out
performances. Why would you do that?
So that is the nature of the current impasse. Other tinkering is about
to happen: the goal tender can't go behind the net to play the puck.
< DIG >
This idea is so lame, if the NHL ruling were applied to chess, it would
be equivalent to saying "The King may move, but not capture!" You'd
have to change the name of the game from Chess to something like
"Neutered", or "Queens".
< /DIG >
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