Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
It's interesting but I think the veteran rule has pretty much ruined pre season hockey, not that pre season hockey was ever something to write home about.
Every game has a lopsided roster resulting in a talented team going through the motions and an untalented team having little chance to generate any kind of flow or entertaining play.
We used to kick off the preseason with all rookie lineups and with that you had prospects filling the net and generating excitement.
In cities like Edmonton they'd start penciling the players in based on those early pre seasons, while in Calgary we'd hear "its early" and "wait until the big boys start playing"
But at least in those days you'd have guys popping, adding confidence, and progressing through camp creating head lines.
What chance does say Connor Zary or Adam Ruzicka have tonight against a veteran Oilers squad? How can a guy like Juuso Valimaki settle down his nerves when his three games to date will have come against a veteran Vancouver, a veteran Seattle and a veteran Oilers team? If anyone needed a nice quiet game against a lesser roster it was that guy.
Rant over.
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You are totally right and it's an example of a process or rule not achieving it's intended outcome.
Since the NHL charges for pre-season games, they wanted to have a reasonable number of veterans. To achieve that teams are signing PTOs and dressing 4th liners to fit the quota.
So it hasn't even done what it was supposed to do.
It's a dumb rule and should be removed.