Game on. And not a moment too soon.
The NHL gets back to work Oct. 5, and it will be a whole new game. Will it be enough to bring a jilted fan base back to the rink? No one can predict that yet.
Still, Friday was a good day for hockey fans. We knew the players and owners had come to terms on a new agreement before Gary Bettman met the media in New York. We didn’t know what the new NHL would look like.
Now we do. It will be played on a sheet of ice with no red line, and a new area of colored ice behind each net. That will be the area where a goalie can play the puck.
There are many other rule changes – players in the offensive zone can “tag up” without being called off-side when the puck enters the zone behind them. Long passes that elude players and go to the opposite end boards will no longer be called icing.
And there will be shootouts. You’ve seen your last NHL tie.
This is supposed to make the game more wide open, to bring the excitement back to the ice. Games with long “home run” passes, fewer whistles, and less goalie equipment should feature more offense and long, sustained periods of action.
Of course, this comes after the longest period of inaction in the history of North American pro sports. The NHL had to lose an entire season to get here. The Players Association, beaten and bloodied, pulled itself off the mat to sign a new agreement. The players could’ve gotten a better deal a year ago, but they followed Bob Goodenow off the ice and into the abyss.
Give Gary Bettman credit for not having an ear-to-ear smirk when announcing that the league was getting back on the ice.
The Bruins understand that longer passes won’t be enough to bring you back, so they also announced reduced ticket prices for the upcoming season. They also took the bold move of offering free tickets to kids 12 and under through Thanksgiving.
These might sound like desperate moves, but this is an industry with nothing to lose. In entertainment, there’s nothing worse than being irrelevant, and the NHL hasn’t entertained anyone with any relevance in a year and a half.
Lower ticket prices and higher-scoring games is a starting point. To get New Englanders excited again, the Bruins need to win. Boston, more than any other team, has been counting down the days to this deal for years. That’s why they’ve got only three players under contract and had committed a mere $1.5 million to player salaries prior to the new deal.
That leaves Mike O’Connell some $37.5 million in cap room to field a team. And with big-name free agents like Chris Pronger, Paul Kariya, Eric Lindros and others available, O’Connell will be filling out a Fantasy League roster with real bodies.
Will the Bruins be ready to contend this year?
“We’d better be,” owner Jeremy Jacobs said Friday evening. “We expect to. It’s up to Mike O’Connell and his staff now.”
Harry Sinden has already said the Bruins will spend close to the full $39.5 million salary cap this year, and there is plenty of talent out there for the taking. In other words, the Bruins will be spending more money than any other NHL team in the upcoming week.
This really is an entirely new NHL.
Lewiston native Tom Caron is a studio host for Boston Red Sox telecasts on NESN.
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