[CliffFletcher]

As for talent and systems, the World Cup teams featured elite talent right throught the lineup. And you can't tell me the Soviets didn't play a system. And yet when teams full of elite players that stuck to a system played one another, you still had teams scoring off the rush and scoring beautiful goals. The Soviets wouldn't even try to score until the puck had touched the stick of every one of their teammates on the ice.

It really is about the revolution in goaltending - in size, technique, and equipment. The obvious adjustment is to increase the size of the nets.

The really comical thing about these threads is all the snickering at old men with their ideas stuck in the past, followed by the same people stamping their feet and moaning about how we can't mess with the tradition of the game by making the nets bigger. Who are the real reactionaries? And of course, none of the people aghast at the prospect would even notice if the nets were two inches bigger.