Their labor union sucks - and since their contracts can be voided - it makes sense for NFL players to protect themselves .
None of them matter and never have .
I am not Mr. Union, but the NFLPA is the most feckless union not just in sports, but in the country.
i thought there was a market for a baseball all star game back in the day (pre intraleague play). of course intraleague and basic cable tv (ESPN) kind of killed it because not soo long ago, you never really saw AL guys if you lived in an NL city or vice versa..
Oh, I don't really care. Just think a round robin style tournament might make more sense for an NHL postseason.
Sorry Dan, but I hope they never make any changes to the current format. It’s the only tournament better than March Madness- there’s a reason why the Stanley Cup is the toughest trophy to win.
Yeah I think overexposure, certain in baseball, has caused alot of the demise in all star games. No doubt money has killed these games. I imagine they got paid something, or there was a bonus in their contract.
I am with you on that. There was no greater journey than following the Pens for two months every other night, hating each new team and eventually capturing the Cup.
They need bigger rinks because the refs won't ever call enough obstruction to stop it. A larger ice surface would take care of it and make the game much more exciting to watch.
My only problem with the bigger ice, it is much easier to push the play to the perimeter.
It only takes 64 games (with play-ins) to settle March Madness with four times as many teams. I think needing 88 or so hockey games to settle a championship is overkill. I know hockey people defend tradition harder than baseball people do sometimes but the fact that a midseason tournament is the most exciting thing that's happened to the sport in the US since 1980 says a lot about the game's trajectory.
But how would altering the Stanley Cup playoff format benefit the NHL? The two most exciting things about the playoffs are sudden-death overtime and Game 7s.
The players were into it because there hasn't been an "International" competition with top NHL players since 2016, the luster of the 4 Nations will wear off quick with NHL players in the next two Olympics and the World Cup of Hockey coming back in 2028.
The vast majority of the public doesn't watch most of the NHL playoffs and therein is the problem. Game 7's are only exciting for a small demographic because most people aren't watching them. And I only suggested this was an idea for the conference championship. You'd still get your game seven for the finals. Right now you just have too many games and too many moving parts for casual fans.
In that case, the question becomes whether the (hypothetical) increased ratings that come with less playoff games outweigh the lost games. TNT likely wouldn’t be thrilled since they’re losing the NBA next year and will likely increase their NHL programming as a result.
I don't have any illusions that anyone would actually go for the idea. I really don't care that much. Just making an observation and expressing an opinion.
Right but the key words there were "vast majority". Just like the chubby secretary in your office suddenly becomes a Steelers fan when they make the playoffs, you always get a small bump in playoff interest but it's still pretty small for hockey.
It’s my SMF style take, but the NHL should do two competitions over the course of the year so that more games have meaning. Shorten the regular season so every game has gravitas, and play a cup competition in addition to the regular season. Two trophies per year. They already award a 2nd trophy now but no one cares about it. Make the Presidents “trophy” your league championship, and make the Stanley cup your cup competition.
As a city that has experienced the roller coaster ride of long cup playoff runs (well not lately) but we have seen almost how exhausting it is for fans....imagine the players? Every other night it is momentum grabbing/changing angst event until the next game. My favorite memories of Pens cup wins were not necessarily the easy series, but the struggles.
I can get behind that idea. The overarching problem with hockey is that it's just not interesting enough in its current state that this sort of mid-season gimmick is the best thing that's happened to the the league in a long time. There are other problems, like the league's inability to showcase its most talented players, but I don't see hockey doing much of anything to fix it. The fact you had a fight, right off of the faceoff in this tournament, tells you a lot about why things don't ever seem to improve.
