Notes from the first day of the NHL board of governors’ meetings, which began a few minutes ago at the Inn & Links at Spanish Bay – part of the Pebble Beach Resorts complex, where dozens of the governors, owners and GMs played golf earlier today at $360 a pop:
Even though the Chicago Blackhawks have adopted a new progressive ownership structure, a couple of old timers – John Ziegler Jr. and Bob Pulford – are here representing the team as alternate governors. They’re old-school. Also attending: Part of the new wave, Steve Yzerman on behalf of the Detroit Red Wings; and Luc Robitaille on behalf of the Los Angeles Kings, two future Hall Of Famers rising fast in the front offices of their respective teams.
Ideally, the guvs wanted to plough through the Nashville Predators’ sale, the new scheduling matrix and collective bargaining accounting matters all tonight before Paul Kelly, the new NHLPA executive director, addressed the board for the first time. If they can manage all that, then tomorrow’s second day of meetings will be devoted mostly to product issues – and a discussion of how much, or how little, attention to pay to another drop in NHL goal scoring.
Friday’s second session of the NHL board of governors will focus on the state of the game, a discussion that the presence of recently retired players such as Luc Robitaille and Steve Yzerman should greatly enhance.
Robitaille is all in favor of more goal-scoring – he was the highest-scoring left winger of all time – and he’s convinced that calling the rules might be enough to get scoring up.
“If you stick to what the rules are and call them all night – the more power plays there are, the more scoring chances there should be,” said Robitaille. “The bottom line is, the players are bigger and quicker today. When I played in ’86, the defencemen – four, five and six – were big guys who were slower. Today, they’re fast and big. A lot of guys come from Europe. There’s a lot of speed. You watch the penalty-killing now, it’s totally different. And the goalies are better.”
The governors ploughed through most of the items on their agenda Thursday night and adopted the pre-lockout schedule by a vote of 26-4. Sources indicated that the opposition came from the Boston Bruins, New York Islanders, New Jersey Devils and Anaheim Ducks. Oddly enough, the new board chairman, Jeremy Jacobs, runs the Bruins. Nice.
