Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
The Ducks aren't a juggernaut playoff team as the last Ducks coach got fired because of the annual playoff failures. It seems it's really only the Flames that have an issue with their antics as most of their playoff opponents seem to have little issue beating them.
|
My point isn't that they're a juggernaut team. I'm just saying that the way they, or other teams like them, play is just what the NHL should be trying to straighten out if they want a league with less goons and a clearer focus on puck skills.
When a team is able to shift the standard of play in a game towards being cheap and another team either suffers or follows suit, then the rules of the game are no longer defining the standard of play. I think CPkitty made the point in another thread that it's also absurd that something stops being a penalty because a team has already taken some penalties. In other games it has felt like the standards for penalties are flipping between being strictly enforced and not at all. It's this inconsistency that is the problem.
The Ducks obviously have a tonne of puck skills too, so I'm not suggesting otherwise. It's just that the way the league handles a lot of the cheap plays incentivises complementing skills with cheap, violent plays as well. Together with having no idea what will and won't be called a penalty from game to game, or even play to play, the NHL is failing hard in terms of clearly prioritising puck skills over violence and cheap shots.
Edit: The last Oilers games are another example of this. In one game Kassian charging all over the ice goes uncalled and contributes to an important win for the Oilers, in the next game the refs call a bunch of penalties and the Oilers get killed on special teams. Who knows what the standards of enforcement really are? Does the league want the violence or not?