Shanahan Unlikely Poster Boy for 'New' NHL
Source: By JAMES DEACON, AOL Sports
Posted: 01/10/08 12:54PM
Filed Under: Columnists
Someone else was supposed to be the New York Rangers’ top goal-scorer this season. A flashy guy like Jaromir Jagr or Chris Drury or Scott Gomez, a player with fewer facial scars than millions on his contract. Not a 21-year vet on a one-year deal who, not being the fleetest of foot, was deemed to be poorly suited to the up-tempo “new NHL” when it debuted three years ago.
But Brendan Shanahan has always been more than the sum of his considerable skills, and he was one of the loudest advocates for rule changes to open up the hooking-and-interfering clogged game. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he has figured out how to excel even if the NHL’s new pace doesn’t appear to suit his age and legs. Teams still need guys who are smart, tough, play their positions well and, especially, find ways to put pucks behind overdressed goaltenders. And Shanahan, with his wicked, quick-release shot, had 15 goals going into a mid-week game against Philadelphia, three more than Jagr.
Shanahan enjoys scoring, and got a kick out of a recent Ranger victory in front of family and friends against the hometown Toronto Maple Leafs. The winger played the point on the power play that night, scoring once and cracking the glass behind the net on another blast that just missed. “It’s nice to do it in Toronto,” he said with a big, tooth-missing smile.
If he had his way, though, he would not be any team’s top scorer, not with only 15 goals at midseason. When Shanahan convened his unofficial rules summit back in the lockout, the mandate was to release a higher-scoring sport from clutch and grab and, in the process, increase scoring chances. “The idea,” he recalled recently, “was to open up the game and let the best players really be the best players.”
That idea is now in practice. The NHL’s 2005 rule changes and strict enforcement of existing rules have given more room for faster skaters and better stick-handlers to exploit their skills. “It’s not completely there, but there’s no doubt the game is better today than it was,” Shanahan says.
But there is this one worrisome statistic. By January 9, 637 games into the 2007-08 season, NHL teams were scoring a combined rate of 5.6 goals per game. That’s down from 5.9 after 637 games last season and 6.2 at the same time in 2005-06.
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Goal-scoring is not the only contributor to a game’s excitement. The NHL game is unquestionably faster and has more scoring chances now than before the rule changes were introduced in 2005. But league officials don’t keep track of total scoring chances, so that view is more subjective than scientific.
Still, most fans agree the pace has quickened and there is more excitement. And the fact is that the current goal-scoring rate, while down, exceeds the 5.14 goals-per-game average from the last pre-rules change season, 2003-04.
So if the game’s moving in the right direction, why are goal totals heading the other way? Some rarely cited stats offer insight: the difference in the last three seasons is entirely made up by a drop in power-play goals. There have been eight fewer penalty minutes per game this season compared to the same period in 2005-06, and the current number of even-strength goals through 637 games is 2,434, exactly the same total as two seasons ago.
To some, that suggests referees have eased up. But players and refs say the big difference is that players’ behaviour has changed. Four years ago you practically had to draw blood to be penalized for hooking, so water-skiing was the defensive technique of choice.
Not any more. Players have learned to keep their sticks away from puck-carrying opponents. Hooking calls alone account for a huge chunk of the reduced infractions. Through 637 games, the striped shirts have whistled only 1,470 hooking penalties, down from 2,491 in 2005-06. That has eliminated more than three minutes of penalties — and power plays — for every game played this season.
The league wants more scoring, but it doesn’t want more hooking and holding penalties to achieve that goal. So if, as the stats suggest, the NHL has succeeded in reducing the scourge of clutch and grab, the league can only do one of two things to immediately boost offence: it can slim down the aforementioned overdressed goaltenders by limiting the size of their equipment, or it can increase the size of the nets. Meanwhile, the NHL will have to hope more players start to emulate Shanahan.
Contact James Deacon at JamesDeaconCA@aol.ca
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