Lets Just Play Hockey

I haven’t written a blog post about the lockout yet, simply because I’ve kind of been naïve enough to think that if I don’t talk about it, it will end. Plus there’s that whole “@#$& you Bettman” attitude I’ve got going too.

But with the NHL cancelling the first 82 games of the season today (October 11 through October 24), I had a little bit of an epiphany. Obviously it is a little bit out there with over 100 players having signed over in the various European leagues, and each team having assigned a majority of their younger stars to their AHL affiliates; but in this post I will outline my plan to have an NHL type season without the NHL owners needing to get involved (like I said, “@#$& you Bettman”).

Remember this is just a pipe dream, but if the NHLPA really is as united as they are then this could work (in some alternate universe).

As we have seen with groups of players getting together to practice and train in the off season, it isn’t hard to imagine groups of teams getting together for a prolonged period of time while the season is on lock out. In reality it probably wouldn’t take more than 3 months for this entire plan to unfold and would benefit each team, their fan bases, and some charities greatly.

My proposal would take place in cities across Canada (sorry USA, a lot of your franchises are the reason we’re in this position to begin with), and would see each team play one exhibition, charity game against each team from across the NHL. These would be organized in charity style, like we are seeing with the mini tour that is taking place in Quebec right now. It would be a glorified round robin tournament that saw the top 16 teams after the 30 games square off in a March Madness type bracket where the team with the best record in the round robin plays the team with the 16^th best record after the round robin. Obviously it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out where I’m going with this.

Round 1 would see a 30 game round robin.

Round 2 would see 1 vs 16, 2 vs 15, 3, vs 14, 4 vs 13, 5 vs 12, 6 vs 11, 7 vs 10, and 8 vs 9 in a one game elimination method until we reached only two teams left standing.

This would be Round 3 where the remaining two teams would play a best of 3 series to win what I want to call the NHLPA Cup.

Games would be three 20 minute run time periods with a flood after 2 periods of action and all proceeds (money not needed to rent ice time and hire referees) from ticket sales would go to a chosen charity of the winning team.

Obviously the logistics are hard to figure out, but its not as if this would fail miserably. Think about just how many Canadians would be willing to go out, and pay 15 to 20 dollars a piece in order to see NHL quality hockey, knowing that it benefits charity? And as I pointed out earlier, its not impossible to think that the players would be willing get together to keep team chemistry together, and actually play hockey games without having to move overseas.

The games would take place in the best kinds of rinks – beaten down old barns that will hold a maximum of 2000 people, and the players would be playing for love of the game; the type of thing that we as fans want to see.

Like I said, it is a pipe dream, but I’d rather watch this than sit through a lockout. Wouldn’t you?