Sunday's News

Slow day in a slow time of season, but still able to comment on some new rule changes.

KK>Boston Globe has news of the new goalie equipment changes for the new season, which includes trimming the length of the pads, and the clavicle protector. There is also mention of further testing for Thermablade heated skate blades, used to a minor degree in the past season.

I for one would agree that having 76" of butterflied pads to cover the bottom of a 72" wide net is ludicrous, so limiting the knee pad to 2.5" should help make it more of a battle on the ice. While there are no specifics yet on the clavicle protection, I would hope that the spring-loaded shoulder pads the Sens faced two years ago will soon be outlawed or made useless. So many goals, sometimes important ones, have been disallowed thanks to illegally curved sticks, and I hope that goalies will also be held to the standard of the rules. The one sad part of all this is that while the new rules helped to allow smaller players, notably defensemen, to play bigger roles, the new goalie equipment rules might make it an even tougher job for the not-so-sizably gifted netminders.

As for Thermablade, is there any need? Does it make the game safer, or closer to some pure vision of the game we can't get to with current skates? I think skaters are plenty fast enough already, and to me this just feels like a cheap way to add another cost to the game, and to make hockey climb ever further up the ladder of expensive sports. Will we start considering rocket skates next? Please Gary, for once, make the right choice for the league and the sport.