Rush, in answer to your queries on my earlier post ....
I am one of those probably rare people who is neutral about the way the game has changed in recent years. I can accept what the game is now, just as I can accept what the game was in previous "eras." It is what it is. As far as personal preference regarding the way the game is evolving now, I have one positive and one negative to say about it. The positive for me is that I don't see as much of the "team sitting on a lead" syndrome as I used to; the current style seems to keep teams playing actively aggressive for a larger proportion of the game than they used to. The negative for me is that the current hectic pace feels less organized. There are a lot more pucks being thrown to no one or nowhere in particular, and there seem to be periods in the game when for minutes at a time the puck seems to be pin balling around randomly with no one ever really gaining control of it. I think some teams even have an underlying strategy of trying to force chaos. Rather than trying to create offense through structured teamwork, the plan seems to be to deliberately create random bounces that hopefully will go their way and lead to a breakaway or something. Hockey has always seemed to me to be a fairly random sport, where breaks, bad bounces and such can in many cases determine the outcome. The current style seems to inject even more randomness into the proceedings.
It is clear to me that a huge underlying reason for channeling the sport in the direction it is going is MONEY. For whatever reasons, the sport in the past largely had a "hard-core purist" following that simply wasn't enough to create the revenue stream for today's multimillion dollar player wishes and multi-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollar ownership wishes. To satisfy that greed, the sport had to change to bring in the mass market: The less sophisticated fan, who wants speed and action and reasons to cheer. But less sophisticated fans don't get thrilled and go crazy over the subtle aspects of the game. Their reason to cheer is the obvious -- scores. So that is what the game is being tweaked to provide. Meanwhile, to draw a contrast, soccer, the "beautiful game," continues to trudge on in relative obscurity in this country at least. Games based on subtlety and low scores aren't going to draw the crowds here. They just aren't.
Hey Black!
I very much appreciate the time you took in producing your response! It’s both refreshing, and rare, to
read the qualities of good, poignant, detail, combined with effective word efficiency! Props to ya!
I now understand your more neutral position on the matter.
Truth be told, at my age, adopting a more objective view on things, from time to time, would serve me better, in my eternal quest for “peace of mind”, LOL!
Getting a new knowledge nugget, now and then, is something I cherish, especially nowadays! I couldn’t quite put a finger on describing WHAT it was that “looked different”, in the general playing style of today’s new game. Your descriptive comparison as “pin balling”, in its randomness, is spot on!
Putting a backdrop that NHL hockey has always had a certain random factor to it, sharpens the focus, as to its increase NOW! It had not occurred to me that teams, sitting on a lead, may actually use this chaos as a tactic.
No argument from me that Money is the chief rationale, driving the game structure today, luring the multitudes, (ok, I’ll keep it nice, here), of fans needing instant-grat! 😁
Thanks for the enlightening post!
There must be some kind of warm light, still flickering down in the ventricles of my old school, hockey purist heart, as Ted still gets damn near 9000 reasons from me, every year, that says I still like his product!😁👍
Rush
