D

     The 1974-75 realignment into divisions was marginally successful in maintaining some degree of team rivalry in an overgrown league. However, it didn’t address the basic problem of filling an expanded league with a fixed talent resource base.
     In 1966-67, 168 players scored 1,252 goals. That’s an average of 7.45 goals a season per player. In the 1992-93 season, 1,040 players scored 7,747 goals for an identical average of 7.45 goals. But the 1966-67 season was only 72 games long. The average player today can score only this many goals when given an additional 10 games.
     In 1967, a referee averaged five penalty calls a game. Today, two refs are needed to call an average of four each period.

I’m cautious about relying on such statistics. Even fans who recall the glory days of Beliveau and Bower agree that today’s Gretzkys and Gilmours are at least as good, or better.
The comparisons above imply only that today’s top hockey stars are just not good enough to compensate for the ineptitude of the roster-fillers needed to accommodate 30 franchises. That’s why it’s so important to reduce the number of teams in the NHL.

     More teams don’t mean greater challenges. On average, the lowest team in any year during the Original Six era rarely finished the season with less than half the number of points as the best team. But in 1992-93, the best team tallied 95 more points that the worst team! The best record was .802. The worst was .202. In 1992-93 seven teams exceed .600 and five teams remained below .400 for most of the season. That year, these top seven teams played one of the bottom five teams 140 times. The stronger team won 127 of these games. So, even before the opening face-off, 15 percent of all NHL games were a foregone conclusion.
     To restore hockey to its former greatness, the league is going to have to take command of its destiny and start cutting teams the way a coach cuts players at fall training. But how far should the new NHL cut?

     For one, we have to restore familiarity. With fewer teams, fans can refamiliarize themselves with all the other teams. During the original six era from 1942-43 to 1966-67, six teams played 210 games a season. Each team played all other teams 14 times. This number of challenges fell to less than half, averaging 6.7 between teams, after the western expansion. If we take a median of 10 games, an 80-game season allows for a maximum of nine NHL teams.
     So that means 21 teams gotta go! I wouldn’t want to be handed the responsibility of cutting that many teams. We could make the job easier, and hand out fewer pink slips in the meantime, by scheduling games in team-challenge groups in a manner similar to baseball, thus squeezing more games into a fixed calendar season.
     Today, each NHL team’s 82-game regular season schedule is played over 185 days. Baseball teams play in three- and four-game series at one venue (i.e.: without traveling), allowing each team to play 162 regular season games over 189 calendar days. Keeping to a 185-day schedule, each NHL team can play 160 games per season. That permits 17 teams at 10 challenges per team combination. To even out the league (for the sake of the play-offs) let’s cut this back to 16 teams. This also has the benefit of cutting the season back, just a bit, to about 175 calendar days, thus mercifully ending the playoffs sometime in late May.
     Fewer teams allows for the dismissal of the most dismal players. But we can do even more. Presently, each team can keep 40 players on roster. During the original six era, teams got by just fine with only 28 players. Of course travel was not nearly as exhausting back when the NHL was little more than a Great Lakes circuit, but the institution of series-challenges will slash travel schedules considerably. Besides, hockey players are tough. They can take it — especially at their salaries.
     So, instead of keeping 1,120 men in uniform, the NHL can reduce its on-ice labourforce to 448. The worst 60 percent of the NHL’s players can be sent down to a new minor league with the 14 cut teams. That’s got to equate to a better game.

Let’s not be naive. The private owners are not going to go for it — especially the owners that don’t make the cut. The cable networks will revolt. The remaining team owners will bemoan the loss of revenue. These groups all have one thing in common. They all fear that a smaller NHL will effect their pocket book. They’re right!
     The only ‘owner’ that is going to place the interest of the fans first is a civic board similar to the one that has successfully kept Edmonton in Edmonton (for now). These non-investors groups will be obligated to place all revenue from TV broadcast rights, concessions and gate receipt into their team, rather than into Swiss bank accounts.
     Public or community ownership has yet to be openly accepted by the major pro sports leagues. In baseball, the sale of the Expos to the Quebec government and of the Padres to the City of San Diego were allegedly blocked by a majority of the other (private) owners. Why? Only those present for the MLB vote can say for certain, but sports fans have long had their speculations. A publicly-owned team would benefit by opening its books to the revenue man, thus setting a trend for all the private teams to follow. Public ownership would break the code of silence. With the books open, the public and the players would have the evidence to prove what they have long believed — that the unified cry of financial hardship decried by the owners in all four major team sports is just a lot of bunk.
     Most of the teams of the AAA International League are community-owned, yet the IL has remained in the baseball ‘business’ for over a century. Indeed, through the 1990s, the IL rode a wave of renewed popularity as baseball traditionalists turn away from the over-sized and talent-thin majors.
     So how to achieve the goal of public ownership?

     One: A municipal government can buy the NHL franchise(s) and recoup this cost through the issuance of stock. In this way the team is purchased by the fans without loans or without draining the already dry state, provincial and city coffers.
     Two: Hockey fans should sacrifice one year’s worth of season’s tickets, and pool this money into one big offer for the team. Forty-one home games, at 17,500 seats each game (each of these selling for a conservative average of $40) would generate only about $30 million. That’s not enough to buy an existing NHL team, but it is probably enough to buy an NHL team that’s just lost a full year’s revenue to boycotting fans!

On to: The New NHL