Well, due to the fact that I've been so busy lately, I just haven't been able to get around to writing about all the stuff that's happened in hockey over the last week or so. It has, however, occurred to me that it might be time to be a little more selective about my topics; I never thought that would be a problem in a year without hockey - especially come April - but here we are. Eric Cairns went ballistic in England, chasing a ref around the rink; Steve Yzerman, Vincent Lecavalier, Jose Theodore, and Daniel Briere won't appear at the Worlds; after the outdoor charity game last night in Hamilton, Martin Brodeur said that he might take his family to see a game with replacement players (I'm sure the NHLPA loved that); and the draft has been postponed indefinitely. Most ridiculous of all, NHL senior VP Colin Campbell is pursuing the idea of making the nets bigger; something that has met with a lot of skepticism already, and is sure to meet more.

The notion's most outspoken critic so far, Canadiens goalie Theodore, has been quoted as saying "Excuse my French, but this is bull****." (What a sense of humour...I like this guy more already.) He also called it "crap," "junk," "ridiculous," and "stupid." And I tend to agree. We're not talking about enlarging the net to a lacrosse-sized goal (not that that would be a good idea; this is just for comparison's sake), but moving the posts a couple inches. So until goalies adapt and find their new crease size - which they will - you might see one or two embarassing goals, likely on dump-ins that the 'tenders think are going wide. Another net design calls for a convex net design; the posts would still be six feet apart, but there would be a larger area for shooters to fire at. That just seems like something you'd see in a bad futuristic sci-fi movie, along with center-fielders with rocket boots and a defensive line of eleven Reggie White clones.

Reducing the size of goalie equipment instead? Go ahead; do it. As the Hockey News writes, "Today's goalies have made a mockery of protective equipment, which has ballooned to the piont where even lanky Miikka Kiprusoff appears freakishly large." And they're absolutely right. Remember a few years ago, with Flyer Garth Snow donned a chest protector with outlandishly huge shoulder pads? He had extra protection for his ears. No one stood for that (not for very long, anyway), yet the leg padding has gotten out of control. There's so little room to see mesh at the bottom of the net, you might as well nail a few two-by-fours to the posts along the bottom, and make the net size 6x3 feet. That's where the answer lies: in bringing back some of the skill in goaltending, so that monstrous equipment can't pick up the slack when reflexes fail.

Many goalies don't agree with this, true - Leaf goalie Ed Belfour, after hearing that the league wanted to reduce pads to 10 inches, measured defenseman Bryan Marchment's shin guards for comparison; upon finding that they were 8 inches wide, he threw a fit because 8 inches is close to 10 inches. But if the league's GMs don't want to do away with huge equipment over the principle that it makes mediocre goalies into good ones, and good ones into great ones, then they might prefer this mathematical representation: SMALLER PADS = MORE GOALS. Nobody's going to be talking about bigger nets after that.

And finally, why did I say that a lacrosse-sized net would be a bad idea? Because it's hockey, not lacrosse. Would you triple the size of a basketball net to open up scoring? Would you move the outfield wall in a hundred feet? Would you widen the uprights? Of course not. Sports are supposed to be about athletes excelling inside the parameters they've been given, not about changing the parameters so athletes can excel. Start doing that, and you foster the creation of a society where individuals can't reach their goals without being given a ladder...and with that, we're now out of the scope of this blog, so I'll digress.