Anyone Who Doesn't Want Bigger Nets In The NHL Is An Idiot

You know how people who do crossfit can’t go a single day without talking about crossfit and about how much they love crossfit and about how awesome crossfit is and about how much they think that everybody else should do crossfit? Well that’s sort of like how Mike Babcock is about making the nets wider in the NHL. And yesterday, he stirred up a few more discussions about the matter with these quotes. (Transcribed via Puck Daddy)

“It’s impossible to score,” the Toronto Maple Leafs coach said this week. “All you gotta do is a math equation. You go to 1980 when the puck went in the net. You got the average size of the goalies in the NHL and the average size of the net. You keep growing the net bigger, that would make the game the same … The net’s too small for the size of the goalies. Period. The goalies are too good for the size of the net.”

Now anyone who watched last night’s Hawks v Blues game knows that it’s clearly not impossible to score. I don’t have the numbers on hand right now to support Babcock’s claim that goals are down significantly since the 80s but I’ll just have to take his word for it since he would know better than I would. Now a lot different things go into that. Yes, goalie pads these days are huge and they obviously take up more of the net than they ever have before. But just as skaters have gotten more skilled and talented, so have goaltenders. So the way they’re playing in net is much more advanced than it was in the 80s also contributing to less goals being scored. And it’s not like you can just tell goalies to start sucking so the only way to get scoring back up in the NHL is to either A) decrease the size of the pads or B) increase the size of the net. And since it’s 2015 and people are worried about things like “player safety”, I can’t imagine you’d get many people to sign off on decreasing the size of the pads.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again; a sick goal will always be a better highlight than a nasty save. Don’t get me wrong, awesome saves like the one Jake Allen had on Anze Kopitar the other night are incredible and can take over the hockey world for a night. But the game needs to belong to the goal scorers because that’s what puts the asses in the seats. Nobody is going to remember that time that Devan Dubnyk robbed the shit out of Connor McDavid. But everyone will remember when McDavid toyed the shit out of Petr Mrazek because goals > saves.

So there is a lot of push back against the wider nets because it’ll completely change the way the goalies have to play the position. And I think those curved nets look ridiculous so nobody would take the game seriously if they went ahead with those contraptions. So I guess the movement that I’m most on board with would be to raise the crossbar a little. More goals makes for a better on-ice product and a better on-ice product makes for more fans. If you’re opposed to increasing the size of the nets, well then I’m pretty sure you still have an argument about how disrespectful to the game Jose Bautista’s bat flip was to get back to. Put the game back in the hands of the scorers and let’s light this shit up.