The NBA created its In-Season Tournament to bribe players into caring about a few random regular-season games. This would be as opposed to the vast majority of games in the league that has also created guidelines about when players are allowed to skip out, just because, and attached games-played minimums for the MVP award.
When that becomes an issue in the NHL, when players opt to sit out because it is beneath them to show up for work every day, when the league’s greatest players tell you via body language that the season is a bore to them, then and maybe then the NHL should stage its own In-Season Tournament.
If everything new is old again, this concept was hardly invented by the NBA or commissioner Adam Silver. In fact, almost 40 years ago, Devils president Bob Butera proposed Christmastime intra-divisional tournaments. The proposal was laughed off, primarily because the NHL laughed off everything that came out of New Jersey during the franchise’s first half-dozen years at the Meadowlands.
That, of course, was B.L.
Before Lou.
No one was particularly laughing when Lamoriello and the Devils slapped a temporary restraining order on the NHL that prevented the league from suspending head coach Jim Schoenfeld from Game 4 of the 1988 conference finals against the Bruins, were they?
There are two reasons NBA players (kind of) bought into this. For the $500,000 winner’s share distributed to all members of the championship squad, and for the chance to spend a handful of days in Vegas on the league’s dime.
Noble pursuits, indeed.
I guess an In-Season Tournament could generate some extra revenue for the league and increase hockey-related revenue. But unless the folks at Ninth Avenue could inspire a streaming service to bid on these games outside of the NHL’s existing media contracts, the added revenue would likely come straight out of customers’ pockets.
Teams would likely create another alternate, alternate, alternate jersey for the tournament to hawk in addition to the multitude of “third” jerseys already in existence. Teams would likely increase ticket prices for tournament games.
You won’t mind, will you, paying a premium for some arbitrary Pittsburgh-Winnipeg game in December?
Yes, the endless NHL regular season can always use a jolt, certainly in January and February. But those winter months present the perfect window for the NHL to conduct an international best-on-best tournament, a variation of which is likely to debut in 2025.
If the league wants to juice the regular season, it should start by increasing the number of intra-divisional and rivalry games. It is patently absurd that clubs play just 26 games within the division, or just under 32 percent of the schedule. That is, in large part, I should say, because players on Eastern Conference teams want to be able to spend time in California and Vegas on the league’s dime. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The league could and should elevate the importance of the regular season rather than merely dressing it up by adding the equivalent of costume jewelry to the ensemble. What will they do, paint the neutral zone red?
The NHL could enhance the 82-game marathon by awarding division champions five home games in a best-of-seven playoff series through the first two rounds. And it could limit wild-card entrants to two home games per series for as long as they survive.
Races for first place and to secure either second or third in the division would be amplified. It would add juice to the season. It would add fiber to the seven-month tour rather than the empty calories of a contrived tournament.
It would add meaning to the season.
That should be the point.
Meanwhile, I am endlessly amused by the fact the NHL’s proposed League of Nations Tournament next winter will not include Russia even as Ninth Avenue promotes and glorifies Team Putin captain Alex Ovechkin at every single opportunity.
For instance, last week the guys from the Michael Kay radio extravaganza set up shop at the NHL Store. Guess whose jersey was displayed most prominently in the background?
Oh yes, that would have been No. 8.
Quite the moral stance.
Have you ever heard the story of the union boss who, frustrated with either a lack of information or a stream of misinformation coming from management regarding the arena situation with the Coyotes, picked up the phone and chatted up his pal, the Mayor of Phoenix, to come up with the real info?
When I saw that Tampa Bay’s Austin Watson recklessly fired a screaming slap shot from his own line that rocketed directly into and off Nashville’s Jeremy Lauzon from 25 feet away in the final seconds of the Lightning’s 5-1 defeat, it reminded me that I’d seen something similar before.
It was March 11, 2015, the Rangers were on top of the Capitals, 3-1, with time winding down in D.C. when Ovechkin wired a wrist shot from the neutral zone that caught Kevin Klein flush on the left arm and broke it. I know there were a fair amount of folks who thought there was something mighty fishy about it.
The defenseman was sidelined for seven weeks, including the first round of the playoffs. And though other issues — including chronic back issues — cropped up, Klein was never quite the same.
Watson was fined $2,022.57 — the max allowable — for his careless behavior.
Finally, you tell me.
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