The Most Fascinating NHL Debates Going on Right Now

New divisional and conference alignment and mandatory visors for new players are two jutting changes set to take effect in the NHL this coming season.

Fans and pundits are free to continue to debate the merits of either of those changes, but topics that are still up in their air carry more flavor.

There are other changes coming in 2013-14, such as an inflated quantity of outdoor contests, that may be less inclined to stick than the realignment or equipment mandate. In turn, those are worth keeping closer to the forefront of the debate table.

So, too, are established practices that may have been renewed for now but are not guaranteed next time, such as putting the NHL’s season on hold for player participation in the Olympics.

Those two issues join three others among the most intriguing debates surrounding the NHL at this time.

To Expand Or Not To Expand?

Greg Wyshynski of Yahoo! Sports is convinced that the NHL will broaden its membership to 32 teams before this decade is half-over and that Seattle will be a part of that expansion.

Until such a notion is confirmed, and even afterwards if it does happen, the potential plus-points and drawbacks of expansion will ride around the opinion ponds like an arena’s resurfacer tandem.

As Wyshynski is apt to note, the new realignment has resulted in an imbalance between divisions and conferences after many years of six neatly organized, five-team divisions, three for each conference. The addition of two teams to the Western Conference would amount to eight teams apiece in four divisions.

Besides that, more is merrier, is it not? Any combination that includes Seattle, Quebec City, Saskatoon, Portland or any other city currently lacking an NHL team would mean delivering top-notch hockey to two new fanbases.

All true, but a case can also be made that the rapid expansion throughout the 1990s and into the year 2000, which saw the NHL go from 21 to 30 tenants in a decade, went far enough or even a tad too far.

In the time since the league reached 30 teams, detractors against even that much expansion have naturally cautioned against going beyond 30. As Sportsnet columnist Mike Brophy wrote in 2009, a 32-franchise circuit would amount to “a further watered-down product and two more teams on shaky ground from the moment of inception.”

Irresistible or unsustainable? That is the question surrounding expansion.

Are More Outdoor Games Overkill?

Just like the expansion debate, the question over whether to conduct more than one outdoor game in a season revolves heavily around whether more is better or just too much of a good thing.

Columnist Ryan Kennedy of The Hockey News responded to the instant swelling of stadium-based contests for next season with an approving assessment. Among other points, he said “for the players, these games will serve as welcome distractions from the doldrums of an 82-game schedule.”

In addition, many fans living in or around the cities that will be a part of the 2013-14 Stadium Series, Heritage Classic or Winter Classic are bound to appreciate the opportunity.

But perhaps only time will tell if the multi-market Stadium Series hits the spot the same way the tried-and-true Winter Classic has.

Furthermore, will it spoil any local appetites for hosting the New Year’s Day showcase down the road? Will it backfire in terms of national TV ratings after everyone has already watched the Winter Classic?

Like it or not, the NHL is going forward with a more generous distribution of outdoor action this season. As soon as the Stadium Series is actually carried out, the debate over whether to bring it back or abandon it post-haste will likely intensify.

Do The NHL And The Olympics Mix?

The most obvious aspect of the argument for professional participation in the Olympics is that this is supposed to be a festival of the world’s best athletes. In men’s ice hockey, that means those who play in the NHL.

For the league’s two home countries, the 2002 and 2010 Olympics were a couple of highlight-reel publicity breakaways. Canada’s gold-medal victory over the United States in Salt Lake City had no shortage of intrigue and the rematch in Vancouver that went to overtime was even more memorable.

But for each of those moments, there have been times when the search for the real benefit brings on a head scratch. The two North American powers have been decidedly less successful overseas, which muddies up the effort to draw television viewers back in the Olympic athletes’ cities of employment.

Combine that with the odd time zone differentials and it is no mystery as to why the 1998 Nagano and 2006 Torino Games did less to hold up hockey fans back home while the NHL’s schedule was on hold.

The NHL will permit its top talent to represent their respective countries once more in Sochi this coming February. The next Winter Games will take place in Pyeongchang, South Korea in 2018.

Could the success in Sochi from an NHL standpoint hold sway on whether the league continues the routine it has followed since 1998? Maybe, but it is certain that next winter’s tournament will have everyone reopening the debate over whether the two-week midseason shutdown every four years is worth it.

The greater the sample size gets, the stronger the cases get on either side.

Touch, No-Touch or Hybrid Icing?

Two months ago, the NHL’s competition committee brought hybrid icing, namely a partial transition from unconditional touch icing to strict no-touch icing, to the forefront of its annual discussion.

Many lower levels of the game, particularly youth and U.S. college, have called icing as soon as a defending team’s clear from its half of the ice crosses the opposing goal line without brushing any players along the way.

The NHL, on the other hand, makes the free faceoff on offensive property harder-earned by requiring a defending skater to beat all members of the clearing team to the puck.

With a slew of injuries resulting from these commonplace footraces, one of the most recent to Carolina’s Joni Pitkanen, the call for reformation couldn’t be clearer.

In recent years, the NCAA has begun to experiment with the hybrid variety. As its rule reads, “The decision to call icing or allow the play to continue shall be made by the defending zone face-off dots.”

Will coming from the opposite direction to the same basic regulation be far enough for the NHL? Or should the college game go back to automatic icing with professional leagues following its lead to that end of the scale?

The injury factor, as mentioned, is the crux of the case for no-touch icing. But the six points behind the NCAA’s rationale for hybrid icing―such as that it “Rewards the fastest skater” and “Will reduce the number of stoppages”―are what you may hear from hybrid or even no-touch advocates.

Should The Delay-of-Game Penalty Be Revisited?

As it reads right now, the first clause of Rule 63.7 calls for a minor penalty on a player deemed guilty of “deliberately shooting the puck out of play.”

When the enforcement of that rule amounted to game-deciding power-play goals, the rule came into question on multiple occasions during the 2012-13 regular season and playoffs. Ryan Dadoun of NBC Sports brought it up in March when the Chicago Blackhawks drew a 1-1 knot on a man advantage brought on by the infraction in question and eventually ousted Detroit, 2-1, in a shootout.

Two months later, Rangers defenseman Ryan McDonagh spooned the puck over the glass in overtime and watched from the bin as Washington’s Mike Green slugged home the clincher in Game 2 of the conference quarterfinals. A similar incident with similar consequences occurred in the second round at the expense of Marc-Edouard Vlasic and the Sharks.

Jesse Spector of The Sporting News was among those who responded with a call for a revision to the rulebook.

Spector likened the infraction to icing and found fault with the adverb “deliberately,” writing that “nobody is trying to shoot the puck out of the rink.”

A valid point, to be sure. But others would be equally credible to claim that removing the puck from the playing surface is a pretty cut-and-dry delay of the game. In addition, eliminating the penalty might bring on a slippery slope of pressured players adeptly making an accidentally intentional scale of the glass.

Then again, perhaps giving the infraction the icing treatment and thus punishing it with a defensive-zone draw would provide a sufficient deterrent, as Spector’s column implies.