Well the playoffs are over, and Lord Stanley’s mug once again lies south of the border. Let’s give credit to the Florida Panthers who once again displayed the levels of tenacity, courage, and viciousness needed to triumph in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Now comes the critical off-season when NHL General Managers and their bosses sit down to try to re-tool their teams for the coming season. And what will they do? They’ll try to make them look like the Florida Panthers, because evidently that’s what works.

            I am a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, and have been for a looonng long time. Yes, I remember their last Cup victory in ‘67 and three others in the 1960’s, and yes, I am hungry for another Cup celebration in Toronto. But if playing hockey like the Florida Panthers is what it takes to win, then I don’t want them to win. Because, quite frankly, Panthers hockey is boring and ugly. 

            You can’t blame the Panthers’ bosses for that. Their job is to create a team that can win in the playoffs and they’ve done that admirably. More power to them. No, the fault lies with NHL leadership, specifically Gary Bettman, the CEO, Steven Walkom, the Vice President and Director of Officiating, and George Parros, the head of player safety for the league. I will tell you now, without serious fear of contradiction, that in the playoffs, hockey is played to a set of rules that is different from those in place in the regular season. Hitting, hooking, holding, and interference are all tolerated to an extent that is never seen during the season. And the result of that tolerance is that much of the beauty, the finesse, the artistry of good hockey vanishes during the playoffs. The victor is not the team with the best hockey players. It’s the toughest team, the meanest, nastiest team, the one that can eliminate the most skilled players on the other side. To be fair, it’s also the team that is well-coached, the one that can play within a solid defensive structure, the one that best executes a winning game plan. They are effective. But it’s not pretty hockey to watch.

            When I watch hockey, I am not thrilled to see 40 seconds of cycling the puck along the boards. It works, and you can recognize it as a useful strategy, but if it results in zone time but no shots on goal…its boring. Four of the games during the final averaged 47 shots on goal combined for two teams. Game 2 had 75 shots, but that was in double OT. Only in game 3 did both teams exceed 30 shots on goal in regulation. That doesn’t, in my humble opinion, make for compelling viewing. 

Ten or fifteen seconds of watching three or four players hack at the skates of one player who’s standing on the puck while the referee shouts at them to “play it, move it” is ten or fifteen seconds of my life that I’ll never get back. Look, if you don’t want to have face-offs in those situations, start calling delay of game penalties until players realize that “play it, move it” means “play it, move it, OR ELSE!” 

 I’m not against hitting. Good hits are also exciting. During the Leafs’ run this spring, I was impressed with how often Simon Benoit refused to bite on the deke, and simply stepped into the opposition forward and separated him from the puck. I love watching Luke Schenn doing the same thing – no longer young and fast, he’s great at using his size and positioning.  Simple, effective and great hockey to watch. When I was a coach I used to tell my kids that the purpose of the body check was to get the puck, and that one of the stupidest plays in hockey was to skate over an available puck to make a vicious hit. Watch for it next spring, and see how many times the puck has been neglected in favour of a punishing hit.

            By the way, for those who will insist that this is just another Leaf fan whining about their failure, let me assure you that I also want to see brilliance from the Oilers, from a fast, small New Jersey team, from Carolina Hurricances, and from a young Habs team that I believe will soon become a real force to reckon with. The problem for all those teams and perhaps a handful of others is that they have to decide whether they can continue to build their team for speed and skill, or do they need to become the Panthers, the Capitals, the LA Kings? 

Beautiful hockey is brilliant passing, incredible speed and deking, wonderful saves – not hooking, holding, and interference. I want to see McDavid at full speed, Marner making magic passes, Suzuki and Caufield moving the puck around. I don’t think we need rule changes for that to happen. We just need officials committed to enforcing the rules. If Steve Walkom, the Director of Officiating insisted that referees allow skaters to skate, prevent interference, and punish unwarranted hits, we could once again watch a game that excites us with speed and finesses. But they don’t seem to want to do that. 

So, why are the rules allowed to drop by the wayside?  Well, in my opinion it starts with overly aggressive expansion of the NHL. There are too many teams, and big, strong, physical players with limited skills are awarded lucrative professional contracts to do what they can do. And in many cases, all they can do is bump and grind and play hockey along the boards.

There are about 550,000 players registered in Hockey USA, and about 470,000 here in Canada. Call it a million in North America. There are 28 million registered basketball players, and about 18 million kids playing baseball. Yet those two sports have 30 major league franchises each where hockey has 32. Two conclusions arise from those details. The first is that you don’t have to be as exceptional in hockey to achieve major league status as you do in basketball or baseball. We’ve diluted the standard of play in the NHL by comparison to other sports. The second conclusion is that if kids aren’t playing the sport and adults aren’t joining beer leagues, then we’re trying  hard to sell the game to people who don’t know and understand the game like Canadians do.

Hockey TV revenues are dropping in the States. According to a story in The Atlantic, “pay-TV operators closed out 2024 with 46.9 million bundled video subscribers, which marked a 12% drop from the year-ago 53.3 million….Once a staple in 91% of all U.S. TV households, the legacy bundle’s penetration has plunged to 38%.” The border matters in all of this too. Articles on tv viewership noted that the US audience was down this year but the Canadian audience was up because more Canadian teams and fewer American teams made the playoffs. 

The NHL needs a big uptick in viewers for the playoffs. And sadly, that means that they are trying to attract more casual viewers – people who don’t know the game all that well. They tune in for the violence. These are direct descendants of the people who crowded the Roman Coliseum to watch gladiators fight to the death. Their ancestors routinely bet on the lions. 

            Those violence-hungry fans are thrilled each year by the post play-off news stories revealing the injury count. There is a certain fascination in considering how much pain endurance a man must have to play an NHL playoff game with a broken sternum, or a broken foot. Here’s a listing of injuries revealed after the playoffs over the past few years (don’t be confused – these are not all this year). It’s a partial listing only. I ran an AI query, and didn’t investigate deeper than that, and I also edited it to make the list a little smaller for this article:

• Leon Draisaitl: Played despite broken ribs and a broken finger  .
• Evander Kane: Managed a sports hernia throughout the playoffs.
• Jalen Chatfield: Missed last 6 games with a hip injury but won’t require surgery.
• Sean Walker: Aggravated shoulder injury; managed but no surgery required.
• Seth Jarvis: Continued dealing with a lingering right-shoulder issue; rehabbing in offseason.
• McDavid may need abdominal surgery.
• Matthew Tkachuk (Panthers): Played through a broken sternum sustained in Game 3.
• Aaron Ekblad (Panthers): Endured a broken foot (from Round 1), two shoulder dislocations, and a torn oblique; still played in the Final.
• Radko Gudas: Played through a high‑ankle sprain acquired Game 1 of the Final.
• Sam Bennett: Suffered an upper‑body injury in Round 2 affecting mobility.
• Alex Killorn (Lightning): Played first Final game with a broken fibula; missed remainder after June 28, 2021.
• Auston Matthews: Suffered head-related issues after a hit in Game 4, was “presenting head injury issues” but cleared for game 7.
• Joseph Woll : Sprained his back (SI joint) by end of Game 6  
• Connor Dewar: Played through a shoulder issue; surgery announced after exit. 
• Jake Muzzin (D): Ruled out for the rest of the regular season and the playoffs (spinal/cervical injury) as of Feb 22, 2023; confirmed he did not return for postseason.
• John Tavares: Suffered a concussion when hit by Corey Perry’s knee in Game 1, was stretchered off and ruled out for the rest of the series.

We hockey fans have a certain healthy disdain when we watch a soccer or basketball player writhing on the ground after a bit of phantom contact. We love those pictures of a guy returning to a game with 56 stitches in his face after blocking a slapshot with his noggin. A toothless grin from Drew Dowdy or Max Domi reinforces hockey’s macho image, and I don’t mind that macho image. It is, and should remain, a tough sport. But it also is, and must – absolutely must – remain a skill sport. I think that element is being lost in the way playoffs are currently being officiated.

Hockey violence is having a lasting effect. Football in the United States is struggling to reduce the number of concussions in their sport, because of the prevalence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). There is a developing body of data that shows that hockey has the same problem.

The largest brain donor study so far (Boston University, 2024) analyzed 77 deceased male hockey players, including 28 who played professionally. It should be noted that these autopsies focused on people who had exhibited symptoms that raised suspicion of CTE, and so a positive finding was a confirmation of a tentative diagnosis. They don’t represent a statistical finding for all hockey players. Nevertheless, the findings were grim.

• 96% of NHL players (18 of 19) had CTE upon post-mortem examination.
  • Across all levels (youth, college, pro), 54% had CTE, and the likelihood increased sharply with level of play.

Numerous notable NHL figures have been diagnosed posthumously with CTE:

• Henri Richard (Stage 3)
• Stan Mikita (Stage 3)
• Bobby Hull (Stage 2)
• Greg Johnson.

“The studies consistently show a 34% increase in odds of CTE for each additional year of play. This dose–response relationship mirrors findings in football and rugby, emphasizing that cumulative exposure—not just position or fighting role—is the primary risk driver. While not definitive for all NHL players, available data indicate CTE is a serious concern for long-career athletes.”

In addition to those listed above, we should pause to remember NHL enforcers Wade Belak, Dereg Boogaard, Rick Rypien, Todd Ewen, and Chris Simon. The last three of these NHL are all confirmed suicides. Belak’s death was under “ambiguous” circumstances, and the Boogeyman, whose autopsy confirmed CTE, died of a drug overdose. Being an NHL gladiator is an ugly job.

And if it’s tough being injured and perhaps permanently affected by high contact hockey for NHL players, what must it be like for those who fail to make the jump to the NHL and retire as long-term AHL or ECHL pro’s? Without the big NHL salary and pension plan to rely on, how tough might it be for their families?

I’d be happy to see hockey’s gladiators offered a good job at Amazon, or the mine, mill or factory that employs people in their place of origin. I’d love to see a cleaner, faster, more skilled version of the sport, being played at the highest levels in only 20 to 24 of the best hockey markets, and to that end I propose an immediate removal of Gary Bettman from his current role. The master of expansionism is still talking about adding teams, and that’s the very last thing we need.