Over the weekend, much talk was about the NHL reducing the number of preseason games. Patrik Laine and David Reinbacher of the Montreal Canadiens were injured in a game last weekend and are out for months.
Should the NHL Look at Reducing the Number of NHL Preseason Games?
Injuries are going to happen in the preseason. Just look at Drew Doughty and the Los Angeles Kings. He will be out for months with a fracture near his ankle after going into the boards the wrong way.
Even if the NHL wanted to reduce the number of preseason games, they would not. This issue can be revisited during the next round of Collective Bargaining between the NHL and NHLPA when they look to modify or amend the CBA.
For now, the NHL preseason will be this long because of hockey-related revenue and other reasons, but mostly for HRR that the NHL and NHLPA split. Reducing the number of games would not reduce the injury risk.
Unlike football, basketball, and baseball, hockey players must play to develop their timing and chemistry. This is not to say that other sports don’t; you can see, especially in the NFL, that not playing in the preseason hurts the first month of the product.
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However, hockey players are built differently and want to play. There is no such thing as load management in the NHL. Maybe clock management, especially at the end of the season when it is time to play in the playoffs; depending on the team’s situation, certain players are taking nights off even if they don’t want to.
But the real issue in the preseason is the rosters these teams put out. For the most part, the home team dresses an NHL lineup, while the road team dresses an AHL lineup. This is unlike during the Kraft Hockeyville Game in Sudbury for Elliott Lake, where the Pittsburgh Penguins and Ottawa Senators dressed pretty healthy NHL rosters.
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Mostly, it is guys trying to make the team take on guys who want to get a feel for the game before ramping it up for the regular season. Hockey players just can’t go full force into the regular season. They need some games to get into game shape.
That is where the injuries happen. As Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period stated on NHL Network Radio on Monday with Scott Laughlin and Gord Stellick, the NHL needs to look at what happens during these preseason games.
That’s really the differentiator, for me is, if anything, you want to try to see if the lineups match up, and that really in terms of getting ready for game shape and game readiness for the regular season, that’s the one that’s the only argument I could possibly make with respect to affecting the overall pace of play and affecting the overall it’ll help the guys to a certain extent. Again, guys that are trying to crack the lineup, they’re going to give it a little bit extra to make their mark and to make a name for themselves in terms of taking those next steps and having an impact on their team and showing their coaching staff and their head coach that they’re going to do whatever it takes to win. So I guess if anything, it comes down to the overall pace of play and the matchups top tier versus top tier.
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Again, we see it around the league. Teams will dress an NHL lineup against an AHL lineup, as we saw with Florida and Carolina. Carolina throttled them 8-2. So, it is difficult for the league, with players trying to leave their mark and make a roster.
If you’re a first, second line, third line guy, you’re going to want to get ready for the regular season and want to give it your all. That’s why even clock when we talk about this towards playoffs, clock management, you know, ice time management, whatever you want to call it, these guys want to get ready for playoffs, and these guys want to play. So its a tricky situation. It’s a little bit different in hockey than I think in other sports, where you can potentially try to minimize, I guess, quote, unquote, the injury bug. But the hockey boys just want to play.
It will be interesting to see how the NHL handles these preseason games moving forward.