The NHL is seemingly still in its infant stages of truly understanding the mechanics of what systems most effect scoring goals, and what function of the game can we chart to predict goals to the highest order of accuracy to reality we can reasonably expect. With that, hockey is an old game that is set in its ways, no matter how dumb or logically flawed those ways may be. My question to you is, where do you see some aspect of the game going, which part will we see a simple change in philosophy that will revolutionize a position of hockey and change the way we think about it.

Personally i think we will see the idea of a single good goalie be replaced with a tandem of two or even three goalies kept in a rotation at a lower cost. Its more pragmatic in the cap era, its easy to find decent to good veteran goalies that if played behind a good defensive system can produce together a similar, or even better, quality of output at a fraction of the cost.

This type of money-ball type of philosophy thinking is why I love the salary cap and am an avid user of this site.

Hit me with your hot takes cowards.

I think the game is definitely trending in the way you describe. Over the last several seasons we've seen many teams rolling 4 lines and sharing much more ice time throughout the games. I've noticed that bottom six forwards are getting more ice time now than I can remember in seasons past. Goalies are starting fewer games now than at any point, too. I attribute these trends to the growth of the game and the competitive balance throughout the league and within each team.

There's so much more skating and speed in today's game than at any point in history. Coaches have realized that it's beneficial to have a fresh Goalie come playoff time. But, I think anything less than 41 starts could cause a #1 Goalie to lose his rhythm. I don't see anyone carrying more than 2 Goalies and being successful any time soon. Although, I do think spending $10M on a single Goalie is a huge mistake. I'd rather have a DAL or BOS tandem or have a cheeper guy like Grubauer or Keumper with an extra $5M+ to spend on D or scoring depth.

Boston is paying collectively 9.75m for their goalie tandem. If you get more than 4 as a goalie you better start being a workhorse. Dallas got bishop cheaper because of injuries with the kings. Cheaper guys like Grubauer or Keumper were young guys coming from situations where they werent starting regularly. Really it comes down to player development.

Onto the main topic, it seems hockey is moving away from the barbaric sport that the game was founded on because of lawsuits for player safety. We have had this player safety topic before my opinion remains unchanged. But in terms of goal scoring, im not sure im following what you mean. its easy to see that late 80s early 90s hockey was much more scoring oriented. look at lemieux, gretzky, hull, any of the dominant players from that generation and look at their totals. in 88-89 lemieux had 85 goals and 114 assists for a whopping 199 points. You wont see that ever again unless they make changes to goalie equipment, or net size. The goalies in this era are massive. bishop for example is 6'7 how many goalies back then were that massive? I think another aspect that loses out right now is the physicallity. you dont have too many guys going for HUGE hits taking themselves out of play anymore. They have really simplified the game to a point where they dont want heavy contact, they dont want to take away a players protections, but they also want to increase scoring when teams are starting to just hang more guys back and hope they can counter attack effectively. Add in the fact that guys have become faster and sticks are longer etc etc and your standard rink is too small to generate that type of scoring. Watch most games and without the powerplay advantage the score is significantly lower. I would simply argue that 5 on 5 hockey is killing the sport because of the way they are "redesigning" the game.

Scoring was higher in the 80's b/c competition was lower. We now have much greater balance overall. The league's top teams could always count on wins against the bottom tier teams and they'd often blow them out. There are no free wins anymore and no free 4-5 point games for top scorers. Lemieux scored 199 points b/c he was able to put up 4-5 points per game against the "bad" teams. I don't believe for one second that McDavid, Sid, and Ovi are simply not even close to as good as Mario, Hull, and Gretzky. It's just much more difficult to pile up points and goals in a much more balanced and competitive league.

I def. agree w/ you about the physicality aspect. Player safety has become a paramount issue.

As for the goaltending, would you rather have Price, Bob, or Vas in the playoffs after a 65 game season or a rested Rask or Bishop? MTL is spending an absurd $12.25M on goaltending this year. That's $2.5M more than BOS and almost $5M more than DAL. That's a huge disadvantage in a cap league.

One final note: Remove the salary cap and watch league scoring skyrocket. A group of super teams (TOR, MTL, BOS, NYR, LAK, etc...) would dominate small market teams. Competitive balance is the primary factor that dictates scoring.

Never said they werent as good, i just said youll never see a season with 199 points like that again.

see i think it goes both ways with goaltending though. you also need a good defense. As a bruins fan i would take all 3 named over rask with our defense. I personally think rask is a puddle when it matters most. His stats say otherwise but i dont think he passes the eye test at all.

agree, but that wont happen as there are plenty of small market teams to say no way.

But would you rather have Rask and Halak at $9.75M AAV or Price and Kinkaid at $12.25M AAV? I'm sure most people would rather have Price over Rask if they were paid the same.

personally? ide prefer price and halak yea. I really dont think rask is that great again even though his stats say otherwise.

Let me tell you with goalies that tandems are much better. As an Isles fan, we’ve had a really good one the past few seasons, and its really good to keep both goalies fresh, and in a good defensive systems especially, tandems are definitely going to win you more games.

The Isles are def. getting the most out of their roster. They have no business being a playoff team on paper, but Trotz and his team get it done from the crease on out. The defensive system and 2-Goalie system seem taylor made for them. I can't help but think that teams w/ rested Goalies come playoff time will be in a much better position to succeed.

There is a good reason we saw Isles and the Canes making deep runs last year even though they don't have a true number 1 and instead a tandem. Keeping two relatively inexpensive mid priced goalies that are reliable but not super talented is better since you can spend the money you save on goal tending and put it into a D core that keeps the number of shots and the quality of those shots at a manageable level for any NHL goalie. Those teams simply do not need a Carey Price caliber goaltender because they do not need their goalie's to make saves that are impossible day in day out. Now if they had a Carey Price, I'm sure they would like to keep him, but they do not need to find one to win, which is good because most teams will not find one within this decade. \

The point I'm making is, when teams are building they should not put heavy capital into desperately finding an elite level goalie because likely they never will, instead use that draft capital and money capital to get the best defense you can buy, and hire the best coaches to develop those defenders and you will never need to play the lottery of finding a generational level talented goalie.

It's also difficult to predict how goalies will develop and perform. That's why it's rare to see goalies drafted high in the 1st round, or in the 1st round at all. Murray and Binnington were both 3rd rounders and Holtby was a 4th rounder. They've combined for the last 4 Cups. Binnington was a minor leaguer 6 months before he won and Murray was on an ELC when he won both Cups. Crazy. You're right: Goalies seem to come out of nowhere. Spending up on building a solid defensive team seems to be the most effective strategy.

BUT dont discount a severely talented goaltender either. Bobrovsky was on fire their first 2 rounds. Vasilevsky was not. Rask was even more on fire and had the better defense. I think it all comes down to streaks. Is the offense on fire? is the defense on fire? is the goalie rattled from an injury or a bad loss? maybe he took a hard hit and felt intimidated. Theres a ton of factors. The playoffs are so grueling that when it matters most I would rather have the stud goalie in net than a goalie tandem. It didnt work out well for the isles or the canes once their dcorp faltered a bit. Talent trumps all in the playoffs. You wanna keep a guy fresh until then thats fine. But in the playoffs give me the stud every night.

But last year also showed how teams like Carolina and NYI could overpower more traditionally built teams with more talent on their D core. They took out the defending champion Capitals and the two time champ Penguins. They were only stopped buy one another and the Bruins who seemingly always have a fully built team even though they never rebuild.

But that's not even my point, the point is Carolina lost their "number one" goalie in the middle of the playoffs last year. To almost any other team that would probably have been a death blow, but for Carolina, it didn't even slow them down. Imagine how screwed a team like Boston would have been if Rask went down, or the champions St Louis. Your only as good as your backup goaltender, and if you have a system that can turn any postionally decent goalie into a 915/ 920 SV % your downfall will not come to a freak injury or a cold streak. Doing this makes your team better designed for the hard hitting and physically dangerous span of a deep playoff run where at any second anyone can be injured and out for the season.

Right but lets not act like there werent other factors involved as well with Carolina and NYI. Islanders had one of the best dcorps in the league last year. Penguins werent truly fully healthy going in and they dont have nearly the defense that the islanders had. Carolina took washington to game 7. first round and won. Thats no small feat but they werent healthy either (oshie injury was a huge blow) as well as having the extended cup run from the year before, the fatigue set in pretty quickly. Blues had a great defense but without binnington they probably lose, same with rask. I dont think Mrazek was going to bring you a stanley cup even if he was healthy because i dont think hes that good of a goalie. Hes a good goalie but he isnt going to win you a stanley cup. Which brings me back around to what i said before, you can win a few games in the playoffs with a platoon. But you need a hot streak from your stud goalie or an elite shutdown defense in order to win the cup. thats just how it ends up working out.