Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina
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.
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How many PTOs dressed in the Flames Oilers game? 2 per team? One of which, Stone, will likely get signed so isn’t even really just a filler like some other PTOs. Not like they’re padding 1/3 of the lineups with PTOs just to fill spots who they know will never get signed.
And what’s wrong with dressing 4th liners? They need to play too.
Is there anything wrong with unbalanced lineups? Edmonton chose to send a crap roster to Calgary. That’s their choice. Obviously neither coaches nor management are concerned or they would have dressed their stars.
What I think is happening, similar to the nfl and nba, is load management is becoming a thing. Stars in the nfl basically don’t even take a snap in the preseason.
NHL stars are already in great shape before they come to camp. This isn’t like the old days where pre season was to get in shape. Most vets only need a couple games to get up to game speed and build chemistry.
The preseason does exactly what it should, give an extended look for young guys who want to crack the line up.
The real question is whether 8 games is really necessary. Seems like a lot.