Sunday, February 11, 2007

Instigator on the Way Out?

Thanks to GS for this tid bit:
Anyone catch the Hot Stove on HNIC tonight? All three panelists talked about how there is interest among GMs to remove the Instigator Rule. One of the guys reported that the NHL is beginning to realize that the demographic they wanted to attract by curbing fighting (new NHL fan) isn't going to care about the game anyway. Therefore, to keep the core fans, they want to bring back the physical element of the game. I want to believe that this is going to happen. The NHL at the end of the day is a business and too many fans like us have either stopped going to games, cancelled Center Ice, etc. and I think it is showing. Let's hope so.

At the least, they should MODIFY the instigator rule, dolling out a ten minute misconduct OR an additional two minutes for instigating as well. There has to be SOME sort of deterence from jumping players for no reason...

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