Tom Benjamin has taken a close look at the first week of the NHL season, and he doesn't like what he's seen so far:
Everybody in the media has the rah-rah pompoms out for Gary Bettman's brand new hockey game, but I can't be very enthusiastic after watching Vancouver play in Detroit last night. The good guys won - and deservedly so - but I didn't think it was a very interesting or exciting game.
Score one for Tom on account of the fact that the league indeed has everyone in the press singing from the same talking points -- something that's awfully annoying when coming out of the mouths of the folks at OLN.
As for interest or excitement, I'd say that Monday night's Toronto-Ottawa game did the trick for me. The puck was moving and the pace was good, a real departure from what the game that I had grown used to watching. I'd say the same for the period or so of the Philly-Toronto game I watched last night, as well as the Vancouver-Edmonton game from over the weekend.
The first period was ruined by penalties starting with Lang at the 24 second mark. The teams settled down in the second and third period and the parade to the box stopped but the game didn't get much better. The players will adjust to the calls but the hockey that we have left may not be nearly as much fun for the fan.There was a seven minute stretch in the third period that went by without a whistle until Mathieu Schneider took a cross checking penalty for actually daring to make contact. Hughson noted the point at the time but he didn't applaud it much because almost nothing exciting happened during the stretch. The teams went back and forth many times but there was no sustained pressure, few shots, and few good chances. It was boring.
Tom is dead on about another thing: In many cases, zero tolerance for contact has become a detriment to the flow of the game. Case in point: I've seen a number of instances where forwards in the offensive zone have been whistled for interference for simply brushing against a defenseman while on their way to the puck (Sean Hill, your Oscar will be waiting for you in April).
As far as I'm concerned, I'm happy so far with what I've seen. Then again, I can't discount the possibility that I'm feeling this way because today's NHL is better than no NHL at all. So while I might be pleased to this point, I think we're going to need to wait a little longer before I'm ready to give a firm thumbs up or down.
UPDATE: Fox's Shawn P. Roarke wants to wait and see too. Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury-News is looking for more tweaks.
POSTSCRIPT: If there's one player I've seen so far that looks out of place, it has to be Mike Commodore of Carolina. In the 2004 playoffs, he was a stalwart performer for the Flames, but on Saturday on Long Island it looked like he simply wasn't suited for the sort of positional play that's come to predominate.
Wade Belak was assessed a hitting penalty last night for taking the body in the slot. It was a perfectly executed open ice body check, and it drew a trip to the sin bin. The grey area of what is tolerable around the goal is still being plotted, but Belak’s hit should be in the allowable column, when the tweaking is finished.