Making NHL All-Star Weekend More Relevant

So this weekend was NHL All-Star Weekend. It was hosted by Tampa Bay, which was a nice location with Gasparilla happening at the same time, which led to Erik Karlsson and Victor Hedman dressing like pirates. I also enjoy the current 3-on-3 tournament setup. However, I think the weekend could be improved in a few ways.

The first is bringing back some form of the All-Star Draft that the NHL tried out several years ago. The NHLPA eventually asked this to stop, but it made for a unique viewing experience and was something different. Right now the captain of each division's team is voted on by fans while the coach is whichever coach is coaching the team highest in the standings at a chosen date. Why not have the captain and coach pick the rest of the roster with some set guidelines (one player from every team being mandatory)? To spice it up, allow the captain to invite someone to help him pick. It could be a celebrity or someone chosen from an organization like Make-a -Wish.

However, my bigger idea is taking All-Star Weekend to non-NHL cities.

I tweeted this out and got some positive feedback, so I figured I'd expand on my thinking.

This idea would give the league and NHLPA a tremendous opportunity to grow the game. The NHL still struggles to make an imprint in most of the United States. I grew up in metro-Detroit where hockey was pretty big, though often the last topic on sports talk radio. However now that I live and teach in West Michigan near Grand Rapids - which is home to a really successful AHL team in the Grand Rapids Griffins and a nearby USHL team in the Muskegon Lumberjacks - hockey is definitely a niche sport. Hockey struggles for a variety of reasons, primarily in my mind because it's so expensive to play. But if the NHL could showcase itself live to more people, I have to believe it would do better.

So where should the NHL consider taking its All-Star Weekend? Here's some options:

Houston, Texas

So the new owner of the Houston Rockets has made some noise about being interested in getting an NHL team. Houston has some hockey history with the Houston Aeros. They are also the 8th largest TV market in the United States. It would make a lot of sense to try out the market with an All-Star Weekend.

Quebec City, Quebec

Quebec City once had an NHL team - the Nordiques. They became the Colorado Avalanche. A group applied for an expansion team for Quebec City during the same time Vegas did but wasn't awarded one. This would be a nice thing to do in response since I believe the group paid a non-refundable $10 million dollar fee. In addition, the amount of NHL players coming from the province of Quebec has been dropping, so while most of Canada is a known hockey market, there may be an opportunity to grow the game a bit here.

Hartford, Conneticut

This is similar to Quebec City - Hartford once had a team, the almost mythic Whalers. This is a strong hockey market still, and I'm sure the city would go crazy over the opportunity to host an NHL All-Star Weekend.

Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City has an arena that is suitable for NHL hockey and for a little bit was a popular option when considering a relocation locale. They currently have an NFL team and an MLB team, but no NBA team. So a winter appearance by the NHL All-Stars would likely be a big deal.

San Diego, California

San Diego is a major market and currently hosts an AHL (minor league hockey) team. I don't believe there's any professional sports around the city during the winter time, so once again this could be big.

Those are just four options. Others include:

Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Portland, Oregon
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Charlotte, North Carolina
Hamilton, Ontario
Orlando, Florida
New Orleans, Louisiana
Baltimore, Maryland
Atlanta, Georgia
Indianapolis, Indiana
Cleveland, Ohio
Memphis, Tennessee

Eventually, the NHL could even take it internationally. I get that the NHL likes to award their owners with an All-Star Weekend, but this seems like a great opportunity to grow the game. 

Making the NHL Trade Deadline Something Worth Watching

One of my favorite escapist activities when I need a mental break is to ruminate on things I would do if I happened to be the commissioner of the NHL. Silly? Absolutely. But hey, it keeps me sane sometimes. My ideas range, but one thing I've always thought about is making the NHL trade deadline something worth watching.

Held at the end of February or the beginning of March, the trade deadline is at 3 PM ET, and in Canada is a day many people are glued to any source of news. However, it seems with each passing year that there's less and less activity.

This was brought to my attention again today as I was listening to the preview of a new, promising hockey podcast: 31 Thoughts with Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman. It will cover Friedman's can't miss once-a-week insider article, 31 Thoughts. And low-and-behold, they talked about changing the way the NHL trade deadline works.

Now, this is not new ground for Marek. He's often spoken about how he wishes they could get all 31 front offices in the same arena on trade deadline day like they do for the draft. A great idea, but something that will likely never happen. However, what was new was Friedman talking about how he believes Rogers (the Canadian media company that now owns the NHL national rights in Canada) asked the NHL if it was possible to move the deadline to primetime and make it more of an event without any games played. Give it a listen below:

The 31 Thoughts preview pod is up at iTunes (and features an interesting bit about Rogers' initial plans for NHL Trade Deadline). First show next Wednesday. Subscribe away, folks.https://t.co/1yL99caBdc pic.twitter.com/WNDgNGq5ni

— Jeff Marek (@JeffMarek) January 6, 2018

Honestly, those are obvious fixes. Move the deadline to somewhere around 9:00 PM ET and don't have games on the same night. Seems perfectly within reason and manageable. 

However, I'm not sure it's enough. 

In recent years, both the quantity of quality of trades has been going down. So in order to make this an actual event, something needs to be changed. 

My suggestion? 

Allow teams to exceed the salary cap by 10% starting on trade deadline day and going until the start of the next season. Also allow teams to go under the cap by 10% on the same day and until the start of the next season. 

This is already the case for teams during the offseason, so it's not completely out of left field. 

It allows more options for both buyers and sellers while also providing a major reason to make moves on the actual trade deadline day (teams right now have the most cap space possible on that day due to the way cap space is calculated, but it clearly isn't enough as many trades get made before the deadline day). 

One may argue it ruins the parity of the game, but I say if a team recognizes they're a buyer or a seller at that point, it only enhances the rest of the season if they can make more moves. People will come to see new players on teams contending for the playoffs. People who are fans of bad teams will come to see young players get worked into the lineup to see if they have a shot at making an impact. 

All I know is, I could certainly see myself watching that night on TV (NHL Network or NBC Sports here in the US) and I would definitely be much more likely to watch that than a game occurring that evening. The NHL needs more events and/or benchmarks, and this could certainly be one. 

Why Isn't Hockeytown Fun?

The Detroit Red Wings have made the playoffs for twenty-five consecutive years. During that time, they've competed in the Stanley Cup Final six times; won the Stanley Cup four times; finished first in their division, conference, and league multiple times; and in an unusual-for-hockey-stroke of hubris, assigned the city of Detroit the moniker of Hockeytown.

It's been nothing short of a dynasty.

However, somewhere along the way, Hockeytown stopped being fun.




It took me longer to find out just how fun hockey is than my dad would have liked. I grew up in Troy, Michigan and when a new state-of-the-art arena opened he camped out to sign me up for youth hockey. The only problem was that I had no interest in this and made my opinion abundantly clear.

I was in elementary school, the Red Wings had not yet won a Stanley Cup despite being an excellent team and I did not yet have hockey fever.

That all changed though with the back-to-back Stanley Cups. I started playing in a learn-to-play program when I was in middle school. It was already too late for me to develop any significant skill; but I could skate fast, play gritty, and make plays. I modeled my game after Kris Draper.

The the league shut down for a year and my interest dissolved. I stopped playing hockey. However as the lockeout went on I started actively participating in various online forums to discuss the game. When the league came back with new rules and the salary cap in place, I became an avid fan.

Eventually my Red Wings fandom bloomed into more of a fandom of the sport at large and that's where I find myself today.

Even still, I live in Michigan and the Red Wings are my team.

And they're just not fun anymore.




Ask any fan and he or she will agree. Oh, sure, there's moments. The blazing speed of Dylan Larkin or Darren Helm, the acrobatic heroics of Petr Mrazek, the riverboat gambling of Brendan Smith, the dazzling dangling of Andreas Athanasiou.

But these moments are too few and far in between.




Winning matters, no doubt. Winning is fun.

But I think we should know that the process is just as important. In the late 90's the teams to beat were Detroit, Colorado, New Jersey, and Dallas. Of those four teams, New Jersey was infamous for playing a boring, low-scoring brand of hockey. They also from what I know were the team that developed the smallest fan base.




So while the Red Wings have had little success in the playoffs in recent years, I don't think this is the only reason why the team is no longer fun. It's not why watching them throughout the season has become an absolute grind.

Instead, it's because of the way the team plays.

It shouldn't be like this. There's a lot of talented players with fun skill sets on the team. There's even some absolutely electric players. But they aren't allowed to be electric.

Why not?

Well, I think it all goes back to when Nicklas Lidstrom retired.

At this point the Red Wings had lost Lidstrom, Rafalski, and Stuart within the past year. The former two were elite puck-moving defenders. Lidstrom may have been the greatest of all time.

Mike Babcock realized his team had one consistent, proven puck-mover in Kronwall and made adjustments. The adjustments were to play a much more conservative game tailored to giving up as few opportunities as possible.

This worked more or less and was probably the right call. However, it also stunted the development of possible puck-movers in Brendan Smith and Jakub Kindl.

The bottom line though was that forwards had to do more defensively and had less to give offensively. This meant they weren't able to entertain as often as they had before. The aging process didn't help, either.

At this point, the conservative Red Wings have become a stale team. The recent UFA signings haven't done much to help.

I had hoped Jeff Blashill would have helped last year, as his AHL teams always played an exciting brand of hockey. We were all disappointed in that though, even if the Wings ended up being a positive possession team.

The bottom line is if this team is going to continue to be a playoff bubble team, and that's most certainly what they're looking at the next couple of years, then they at least need to play an entertaining brand of hockey in order to keep fan interest high.

This should be of particular importance for the team since they have a new arena to fill in a year.

So please let the players and the team be fun again.