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Bobby Orr believes the game has become too dangerous
Talks about the speed and the strength of players and losing too many players to injuries
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Bobby Orr says he believes that hockey has become too fast and dangerous and thinks that the NHL should put the red line back in to slow down the game to protect the players
it would go a long way if the players had any respect for one another.
Yeah, they are stronger and faster and play with suits of armour but a little respect for your oppossing players would go a long way....except if theyre oilers or canucks that is.
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Are we really losing more players to injury than we were 10 or 20 years ago?
Even if we are, that could easily be explained by modern concussion protocols and at least some (though probabaly still not enough) restrictions on the use of painkillers now.
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Also, as Orr stated, has scoring increased because of the new rules? The answer is no, the coaches adapt and coach the scoring out of the game to win. As many people stated when the red line was removed to make the game like the European game, the game has become boring on most nights.
All teams now jam the front of the net on defense and block shots then dump the puck to the far blue line for a chip in and change. The teams that have actually become successful are the teams that attack up the ice as five man units with short quick passes. I hope they get rid of the no red line rule and the touch up offsides, it hasn't made the game any faster.
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They should also stop allowing players to wear hard plastic armour. With the exception of shin pads, pads should be made of softer absorbing material.
Already been addressed years ago. Everything but shin guards and helmet have been given multidensity foam laminate coverings to absorb impact on the outside of plastic shells.
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i've always felt like one of the major catalysts to all injuries is the switch from wooden sticks to aluminum or carbon fibre...
once the velocity of the pucks got so high, the natural response was to increase protection... but the protection causes many other issues, particularly with the concussions etc. Goalie equipment also got bigger as a result.
the genie is probably out of the bottle now, but i honestly believe that if the NHL moved back to wooden sticks, there could be a reduction in the kind and amount of padding needed...
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Ken Dryen on the game today
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Where is the game going now?
Well, I don't know. I think you can reasonably predict that the speed and skill will continue to escalate. But I think that's part of the reason for the outrageous hits -- not the normal routine hits, but the out-of-the-blue ones that make you shudder. They're usually 4 or 5 feet from the boards and those have increased. In part, I think it's from speed. Speed gives you the opportunity to be reckless. In earlier times, you weren't close enough or moving fast enough to deliver that kind of hit. Now, there are opportunities and that's the dangerous part of it.
And there's a different kind of antagonism now. A slash on the wrist or a jab on the ankles is a different kind of antagonism than an elbow to the head. That's the part that can get overlooked and confused. People say, "Well, we've always had antagonism." Yes, but tell me what they used to do and how fundamentally dangerous it was or wasn't. At one time, the stick was the dangerous instrument in a game. What did leagues do? They passed stick rules. No high sticking or slashing or spearing or, worst of all, stick swinging. Well, now with the kind of protection players wear, the stick isn't the dangerous weapon anymore. It's the body that's the dangerous weapon. The pests, the instigators and the antagonists now do it with their body.
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Finally, you get to the answer that isn't so easy. It's, how do we play?
Is there a way that the game can be just as exciting to watch and to play and to be less dangerous? Concussions don't just happen randomly; they can be random, but they also happen when you do certain things in certain places and often involving certain people. If you really focus in, you can see certain patterns. Then you put it to the coaches and put it to the players and say, "You guys are always adapting. You adapt every shift you're on the ice. Between games, you're imagining how you're going to do something, always trying to get ahead of the other guy."
Well, if this is one of those challenges, having coaches, managers and players figuring out how to change those techniques in those problem moments. Players do that all the time, but they don't talk about it. They're competitive and they adapt, like figuring out how against a certain defenseman when they go back for a puck, how you come out with control of the puck and not get blasted by the guy. It's learning how to control the moment.
Also, as Orr stated, has scoring increased because of the new rules? The answer is no, the coaches adapt and coach the scoring out of the game to win. As many people stated when the red line was removed to make the game like the European game, the game has become boring on most nights.
All teams now jam the front of the net on defense and block shots then dump the puck to the far blue line for a chip in and change. The teams that have actually become successful are the teams that attack up the ice as five man units with short quick passes. I hope they get rid of the no red line rule and the touch up offsides, it hasn't made the game any faster.
I might be fine with bringing back the red line, but if you do that you need to push the blue lines back closer to the nets in order to make the neutral zone big enough to avoid a bunch of two line offside passes. Though if you push the blue lines closer to the nets the offensive zone will be cramped, unless you push the nets back closer to the back boards like they were before.
So it's not as easy to just say add back the red line and it will make the game better. You have to go back and remember all the reasons the NHL made all the previous changes and see if they really worked.
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They just need to enforce the rules on the books. The amount of dangerous stuff that goes uncalled is a major problem. And then the wheel of Justice neuters the deterrent effect. The hit by Hamhuis on Bennett's head in the playoffs was a prime example and there are many others through the season every season.
Another way to enforce the rules would be to levy fines after games based on video review. If every slash to a star player's wrist cost 5K it would slow down in a hurry. If every head shot was 100K regardless if it got called during the game maybe things would be safer.
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Refs need to start calling the rules by the book. None of this put the whistles away in the 3rd, makeup calls because the other team got 5 penalties in the row, and letting little hacks and slashes get away. To me it's as simple as that. Start suspending/fining players so that it hurts their pocket book and you'll see players start to change their game.
Fact is, the NHL is run by the old boys club and until a new generation of NHL management comes in, things are never going to change.
Last edited by Huntingwhale; 07-11-2016 at 08:08 PM.
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Originally Posted by corporatejay
Old people are the worst. Didn't he retire early because of guys cutting his knees off? Where was the respect there?
His knees were basicly effed up by the time he was done playing junior hockey with Oshawa. By his 3rd season in Boston, torn cartilage and degeneration of the joint surface had already scared the inside of his knee. Add in 6 operations scopes and he had to hang up the blades. Operations and scopes that pale in comparison to what players get done today.
Bobby Orr believes the game has become too dangerous
