Saturday, June 07, 2003
I don't really care about no-touch icing one way or the other, but it seems a lot of folks don't like it.
Yet it already exists in the ECHL and major juniors, and no less an old-schooler than Don Cherry is a fan.
If you have Real Player, check out the Coach's Corner where Grapes makes his case against, as he puts it, the worst thing in the world, this touch icing, using car-crash clips of Al MacInnis, Mark Tinordi and Pat Peake to make his point. It's about six minutes in (though if you watch the whole thing, you'll catch Don's cameo in the Tragically Hip video, and his prediction that everything will work out OK for Shayne Corson and the Leafs).
Meanwhile, Colorado's Ralph Backstrom, who knows a thing or two about hockey, says it will speed things up by eliminating five to 10 faceoffs a game.
When the Hockey News did its player's poll on the subject, the NHLers surveyed went 17-13 in favor of keeping things the way they are, which is inconclusive (though it probably means more players want to switch to no-touch icing than are willing to wear visors).
And let's face it, speeding up the game and protecting the player's well-being for purely humanitarian reasons are not the only issues. If the change does away with just one injury, whether a broken arm or a career-threatening concussion or god forbid, something worse, it will have been successful from ownership's perspective, as far as workman's comp and health insurance.
Yet it already exists in the ECHL and major juniors, and no less an old-schooler than Don Cherry is a fan.
If you have Real Player, check out the Coach's Corner where Grapes makes his case against, as he puts it, the worst thing in the world, this touch icing, using car-crash clips of Al MacInnis, Mark Tinordi and Pat Peake to make his point. It's about six minutes in (though if you watch the whole thing, you'll catch Don's cameo in the Tragically Hip video, and his prediction that everything will work out OK for Shayne Corson and the Leafs).
Meanwhile, Colorado's Ralph Backstrom, who knows a thing or two about hockey, says it will speed things up by eliminating five to 10 faceoffs a game.
When the Hockey News did its player's poll on the subject, the NHLers surveyed went 17-13 in favor of keeping things the way they are, which is inconclusive (though it probably means more players want to switch to no-touch icing than are willing to wear visors).
And let's face it, speeding up the game and protecting the player's well-being for purely humanitarian reasons are not the only issues. If the change does away with just one injury, whether a broken arm or a career-threatening concussion or god forbid, something worse, it will have been successful from ownership's perspective, as far as workman's comp and health insurance.
# posted by JC @ 3:13 AM 
