The Hockey Stop

Brendan Shanahan is shunning the hockey purists and that is a good thing for the future of the National Hockey League.

The NHL's new VP of hockey and business affairs wrapped up the league's first Research, Development and Orientation Camp on Thursday at the Toronto Maple Leafs' nearly one-year-old practice facility -- the state-of-the-art Mastercard Centre for Hockey Excellence.

The past week featured 33 top-rated 17-year-old junior hockey players hitting the ice to test a series of potential new rules in front of NHL coaches, general managers and executives.

Some of the rules will likely never see the light of day, such as during the overtime session reducing the number of players on the ice by a man every three minutes until it is two on two. However, there are some rules that fans could see in the next few years.

Right now icing the puck is incredibly dangerous, even by hockey standards, because it creates an intense race to touch the puck first (see picture above) and one little nick in the ice surface can send a player barreling into the boards head first and cause a serious injury.

That is why, in my opinion, automatic icing like they have in international competition is what the NHL needs. And no-touch icing is on the table and was tested this past week. But also tested was "hybrid icing," which would allow the linesman to rule an icing if it is clear that the defender would have touched the puck first. But this rule does nothing to mitigate the close races for the puck and would do nothing to prevent serious injuries. In my view, while hybrid icing would be a step in the right direction, why not just go full throttle and write no-touch icing into the rulebook. After all, if it could save one player from a serious and possibly career-ending injury then it is worth it.

There were plenty of other rules tested including a referee sitting on the sideline above the ice to get a better view of the action and any infractions (the coaches don't like this one because it is harder to yell at the ref), but the bigger picture here is a promising one. The RDO Camp is a reminder that over five years after the lost season due to the lockout, the NHL is still working hard to win back fans by making the game more dynamic and exciting then it has ever been.

The danger in so many new rules is that it will water down the game so much it will become a joke and that these are simply gimmicks to attract non-hockey fans in an era of sports entertainment overload where a guy on a couch can just as easily watch the Lingerie Football League on his 500-channel cable package than the nightly pro hockey game.

But if done in a careful and thoughtful way as the past week's testing proves, then it can really correct some outdated rules and make the game of hockey more exciting without detracting from the purity of the sport. Otherwise if nothing is done, then you have Major League Baseball, where managers still get ejected for arguing calls when video replay would have saved time and lowered the blood pressure of managers and umpires across professional baseball.

So kudos to Gary Bettman, Shanny and the National Hockey League for holding the Research, Development and Orientation Camp. By thinking outside of the box they are assuring a promising future for the fastest sport in the world.