More Hockey Ideas

If you follow this blog, then you know I love hockey. With the new season approaching, I thought I’d whip up a few more hockey-related ideas.

1. Really go all out for the theme nights. For better or worse, Major League Baseball has a few league-wide traditions every year that is commemorated with new uniforms, logos, and patches. These include the July 4th celebrations, where all team logos get the ‘stars and stripes’ treatment; a salute to Spanish Americans where teams are renamed (Los Mariners, Los Yankees); and the Jackie Robinson tribute day where all teams sport a commemorative patch. The NHL doesn’t really do anything league-wide, but has a few events like the Winter Classic and Heritage Classic which focus on the participating teams.

What the NHL could do is have some fun holiday-related events, like Halloween:

Teams could tweak their look like this Senators Zombie concept I made here, or adopt a new identity altogether. For example, the Canucks could turn into the Cannibals for the night. Don’t get me wrong, it would be a merchandising opportunity, but a fun one at that. If the fans can get all dressed-up for the night, the team can too. I’d love to see the goalies wear Jason masks, even if it is only for the pregame skate.

To a small degree, this trend has already occurred, with the New Jersey Devils celebrating St. Patrick’s Day last year by donning their green-trimmed throwback jerseys.

I also think the NHL could do more on Remembrance Day/Veteran’s Day. Teams could adorn army-themed jerseys that would pay tribute to vets, and auction them off after the game. Junior teams do this all the time, so why the NHL doesn’t do this is beyond me. Here is a slick jersey the Manitoba Moose wore a few years ago:

2. More matinee games on holidays please - especially here in Canada. I don’t understand why Canadian teams don’t take to the ice on a stat holiday afternoon - Canadian Thanksgiving especially. Yeah we’re a bit spoiled up here with Hockey Day in Canada and the Heritage Classic, but some matinee match-ups would go great with turkey.

Same goes for Remembrance Day, Boxing Day, New Years Day. I also think Hockey Day in Canada should be a stat holiday, but that’s another blog post in itself.

3. Return the countdown tradition. You probably haven’t noticed it, but a longtime tradition has been dead in hockey for the past 2 decades (since the start of the 1991-92 season). That tradition: when fans counted down the final 10 seconds of the clock to signal a home team victory. The 91-92 season introduced a rule change where the last minute of each period the time clock would countdown in tenths of a second. Before: 00:10 00:09 00:08 00:07 etc. After: 10.9 10.8 10.7 10.6 (Really fast).

This resulted in fans not really being able to countdown in unison, or at all. This practice has been abandoned altogether.

What I propose, is on the main scoreboard (not the timer), a simple countdown which would be visible for all fans to view and countdown with. It’s very celebratory and dramatic.

Check it out at 1:33 of this video (at least that’s when you really start to hear it), from 1988:

4. Need some secondary broadcasting options. CBC should simulcast some of their regional games on CBC Newsworld. For those who might not want to see the Leafs play, simply switch it to Newsworld to see the Sens or Habs. I’m glad TSN has followed in ESPN’s footsteps and added TSN2, it’s just not widely available yet. At least with CBC Newsworld being a tier 1 channel it would be widely available and would make for an attractive option to check out other games - especially come playoff time. CBC does provide online streaming, it’s just not the same quality.

I imagine the CRTC would prevent the CBC from doing something like this. Darn license restrictions!

Once upon a time I used to tune into the french CBC to watch the Habs play on Saturday night, but alas no more. RDS now does the broadcasts (RDS is TSN’s french arm). It was nice to juggle channels though.

To check out other Hockey-related ideas: click here.