Rule Change Friday

I don't think I'm in the minority here when I say that I like exciting hockey. Having been through the "dead puck" era of the NHL when some version of the trap was used by almost every team, watching hockey was a chore in that era where teams looked to prevent mistakes and were far more comfortable winning 2-1 while preventing their opposition from scoring more than two goals. Good defence hasn't taken a backseat in the NHL as we still see strong defensive teams, but no fans fo to hockey games to watch a clinic on how to stifle offensive hockey. Fans like offence, fans want offence, and two leagues today instituted rule changes that should help generate more offence in games and situations. Thee rule changes won't solve every problem when it comes to overall scoring in these leagues, but it shoudl give fans some hope that offensive hockey is being prioritized when it comes to entertainment value.

We'll start in the WHL who announced three rule changes today. The first two included implementing a coach's challenge for offside goals and adding an officials' review of major and match penalties, but the one I want to focus on in the "no return" 3-on-3 overtime. As you likely have seen in European leagues, teams in overtime can move the puck up the ice, but once they cross the centre ice line they are forbidden to retreat to their defensive zone unless playing defence. The numbers show this is a good rule.

The third rule today is exactly that - a "no retreat" overtime rule. Teams in the WHL will be forbidden to possess the puck in the defensive zone once they cross the centre red line, and this should promote more games being decided in overtime based on what we've seen in other leagues. We're one step close to banning the shootout!

In all seriousness, the Champions Legaue has been using this rule and tracking metrics, and it's not hard to see why this is better for the game. Here are their numbers and MHL (KHL junior circuit) numbers:

• Shot attempts increased by 51% in overtime overall.
• Alternating shot attempts increased by 53% as both teams played more offensively in trying to end the game.
• Puck possession changes were up 23% as teams simply could not retreat into their own zone and regroup.
• Attacking zone swaps increased by 17% as teams forced turnovers and moved the puck more.
• Games completed in overtime increased by 12%.
• Officials approved "no retreat" overtime by 87%, fans by 64%, and Champions League clubs by 63%.
• In the MHL, overtimes averaged 2:14 in length with this rule.
• The MHL saw 67% of games decided in overtime rather than the shootout, giving fans more entertainment.

In short, this overtime rule works because it forces teams to play offensively which results in more mistakes and more goals. Less shootouts are better for the game, so I'm happy to see the WHL adopt this rule rull-time! Now if we could reinstitute tie games....

That aside, we'll move to the AHL where they also made a couple of minor changes to their rules today. The two rules that shouldn't affect too many plays are an expanded video review process to give coaches more options for challenges and using video review for awarding goals for pucks entering the net on a continuous play despite the referee blowing the whistle. Both of these situations do happen so these needed some altering, but it's the third rule that could affect some teams' decisions when it comes to using video review liberally.

Starting today, the AHL announced that any "team’s first failed coach's challenge will result in a bench minor penalty for delay of game. Subsequent failed challenges in the same game will result in double-minor penalties" which is an excellent addition to the video review rules because there is nothing worse than a ten-minute delay after a goal is scored because some coach believed a player's skate was a millimeter offside. If he's right, good on that voach. If he simply wanted a timeout for his team, a minor and subsequent double-minor penalty should curb the enthusiasm over video reviews.

The AHL doesn't publish any numbers on video review challenges, but it seems clear that the Board of Governors wanted to see changes by implementing these new rules. Whether or not this cuts down on the number of coach's challeneges seen in the AHL will be determined, but I'm very sure there aren't a lot of coaches willing to put his team down a man for four minutes after one unsuccessful challenge.

Both of these rules in these respective leagues should keep the pace of games moving and make the games more entertaining. The WHL will likely see more games decided in overtime which is always a good thing, and the AHL should see less long delays when video review of a play is needed as failed challenges will now see teams penalized more heavily. As Champions League stakeholders show with their approval ratings, fans, teams, and officials are fans of more entertaining games alike, and the NHL would be wise to start looking at these kinds of changes to make their product better overall.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

The Hockey Show - Episode 730

The Hockey Show, Canada's only campus-produced radio show that strictly talks hockey, is still not back in the confines of the UMFM studios as both hosts are off on separate adventures this week! That doesn't mean they forgot about the show, though, as they have another interview with a fascinating individual tonight! Honestly, it's the stories you don't hear about when it comes to hockey players - specifically, women's hockey players - that are absolutely incredible, and you'll hear a bunch of them from a former U SPORTS player who is now winning championships! Who is this person and what's her story? Find out tonight on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT!

Tonight, Teebz and Jason sit down and chat with former University of Saskatchewan Huskies defender Brooke Patron after she helped the NWZIHL's Auckland Steel win their fourth-straight championship! We talk to Brooke about growing up in Redvers, Saskatchewan, playing for Weyburn, her career with the Huskies, everything that happened between leaving Saskatchewan and landing in New Zealand, her chosen careers, her newest sporting endeavour, and, of course, her hockey career in New Zealand! Honestly, Brooke's life has been a whirlwind of awesome jobs, good hockey opportunities, and not being afraid to chase her dreams, and you'll hear that in the interview as we get to know the former Huskies rearguard tonight on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT on one of 101.5 FM, Channel 718 on MTS TV, or via UMFM.com!

If you live outside Winnipeg and want to listen, we have options! The UMFM website's streaming player works well if you want to listen online. We also recommend Radio Garden if you need an easy-to-use online stream. If you're more of an app person, we recommend you use the TuneIn app found on the App Store or Google Play Store.

If you have questions, you can email all show queries and comments to hockeyshow@umfm.com! Tweet me anytime with questions you may have by hitting me up at @TeebzHBIC on Twitter! I'm here to listen to you, so make your voice heard! And because both Teebz and Jason are on the butterfly app where things are less noisy, you can find Teebz here and Jason here on Bluesky!

Tonight, Teebz and Jason chat with former Huskies defender and current NZWIHL champion Brooke Patron about Saskatchewan, university hockey, frequent moves, horticulture, New Zealand hockey, Jason Momoa, Lord of the Rings, getting in the ring, and much more exclusively on 101.5 UMFM and on the UMFM.com web stream!

PODCAST: September 17, 2026: Episode 730

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Jersey's Got Skills

After she left the Seattle Kraken, it seemed like hockey was letting one of the smartest minds in the game sit on the sidelines with Jessica Campbell being unemployed. Some neanderthals will argue that's where she likely deserved to be, but it's hard to argue about the work she did with the AHL's Coachella Valley Firebirds in helping them reach back-to-back Calder Cup Finals. In any case, the wait is now over as Campbell has been hired by the New Jersey Devils as the team's manager of hockey development, and this might be a role that suits her best when it comes to building skills and identifying strengths and weaknesses in players. If you want someone who focuses on the details to ensure results are being achieved, Jessica Campbell brings that to the New Jersey Devils.

Campbell's tenure with the Firebirds saw her working with players on the skill development side as a skills and skating coach, and there's an argument to be made that the Devils could use some of that knowledge she possesses after missing the playoffs by eleven points last season. That's not to say that the Devils don't have good players, but there's a case to be made that more skilled teams make the playoffs more often. If Campbell is managing the entire portfolio of hockey development, skills development should fall under her watch.

We haven't seen a lot of high-end talent come out of the Utica Devils in recent years for New Jersey, so Utica could be the landing spot for players that GM Sunny Mehta and Campbell identify as future Devils. With Mehta and his scouting staff identifying players they want to sign and Campbell evaluating their skills, adding Campbell could prove to be be a very fruitful hiring for the Devils if they start identifying and developing players quicker. That will help in a number of areas including success on the ice, on their balance sheet with respect to the salary cap, and by attracting more high-end talent.

"She's very detail oriented. She listens very well to the players and what we want to do," former Devils defender Damon Severson said of Campbell's coaching approach. "It's not always just about going out with her and putting drills on the ice and we just do them. She wants to hear the players' feedback and what we want to work on throughout the summer. She just wants to get herself better."

That kind of growth she's pursuing would have interested Mehta who in worked for the Devils from 2014-18 as their director of hockey analytics where he built the first full-time analytics department in the NHL. Clearly, Mehta is a forward-thinking guy who uses as much knowledge and data as he can to make smart moves, so having someone who can build on the skills of players that he acquires makes sense if the Devils are going to compete for a Stanley Cup.

Everything seems to point to Mehta's experiences watching and learning from the architects who built the Devils in the 1990s that led to success that spanned a decade, and it sounds like Mehta is all-in on the developmental aspect of the Devils who will look to build a strong AHL team in Utica with players who can step into an NHL role at any time. That's where Campbell will play a vital role in helping Mehta achieve that vision with her commitment to development.

For a guy who was once a poker player, rolling the dice with Campbell in charge of hockey development seems like a sure win. There might be some bumps along the way as nothing ever comes easy, but Campbell's dedication to improving player skills and Mehta's dedication to improving the Devils seems like pocket pair of aces.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

It Was Always One Name

I had a chuckle today as a co-worker lamented over Connor Hellebuyck's situation in my office. His proposal was that the Jets are now the laughing stock of the NHL thanks to Kevin Cheveldayoff's inability to facilitate a trade with any number of teams, and this poor asset management will lead to more heartbreak for Jets fans like him. I can't say he's wrong, but his proposal that the Jets should apply for a new team name as the "Jokes" made me laugh before it got the old gray matter churning as we almost had a minor-league version of the Jets before the Atlanta Thrashers headed north.

Back in the summer of 1996, the IHL approved the relocation of the Minnesota Moose to Winnipeg as current Jets' owner Mark Chipman had bought the IHL franchise. Of course, a new league and team in town generates excitement, and one of the ways to get fans involved early is to run a "Name the Team" contest. We already knew the Moose were coming to Winnipeg with that name, so did Chipman need to run this contest? Apparently, the correct answer is yes.

On Friday, March 1, 1996, the newly-relocated IHL franchise in Winnipeg took out a half-page advertisement in the Winnipeg Free Press to run their "Name the Team" contest. This is that ad.

There was a pretty cool grand prize for whoever had their entry selected as flying to Chicago to see the Wolves and Moose play on Air Canada with a friend would be pretty fun despite the game being played in Rosemont as opposed to Chicago. Nevertheless, a free trip is awesome and getting to watch live hockey always makes it better.

However, I want to point your attention to the actual "Name the Team" entry portion of the advertisement where two of the names seem very familiar if you're a Winnipeg hockey fan of any kind.

The team went ahead and proposed two names that they didn't own nor held the trademarks for by printing "Winnipeg Jets" and "Winnipeg Warriors" as two of their more popular names. The Jets had just moved to the Arizona desert to become the Coyotes while the Warriors left Winnipeg in 1984 to become the Moose Jaw Warriors. As far as I can tell, neither the Coyotes nor the Moose Jaw Warriors had given permission to Chipman et al. to use those names for his team.

Had one of those names been selected by fans, it's likely that Mark Chipman would have had to negotiate the rights for those names since they belonged to those franchises, but history tells us that the team went with "Manitoba Moose" which seems like the name that requires the least amount of work to trademark. After all, the team once was the Minnesota Moose, and the original Moose logo literally was just modified to say "Manitoba" rather than "Minnesota".

What makes this rather unbelievable to me, however, is that Mark Chipman, current owner of the Jets, proposed that name for the Moose who were the first professional hockey franchise he owned in Winnipeg. It feels like the name "Jets" was always going to be the name of a pro hockey team if one returned to Winnipeg, and, in 2011, we found out that the NHL team that moved from Atlanta would indeed be called "Winnipeg Jets". It's almost like Chipman wanted that name and wasn't going to let anyone else have it!

I want to be clear that "Jets" isn't a bad name in any way, but it seems like, with the advertisement above, that Mark Chipman would someday own a professional hockey franchise called "Winnipeg Jets". He may have missed out on having that dream achieved in the IHL in 1996, but he certainly didn't miss again in 2011 when he bought and relocated the Atlanta Thrashers franchise. And had the fans opted for that name and the NHL had given up rights to that name, we may now be talking about the fourth iteration of the Jets after they played in the WHA, the NHL, the IHL, and back again in the NHL.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Politics And Hockey

The skates to the left are what Alexander Ovechkin wore for warm-up for one game back in 2017 while skating with the Capitals. Obviously, that was before the war in Ukraine began and there was still a modicum of goodwill towards Ovechkin in Washington hockey circles, but things have changed in the last decade to help the world see that Russia is a villain on the world's stage. Every player and his or her team's marketing department is very aware of that player's public image, so you'd think Ovechkin would be distancing himself from Russia's leadership to remain as neutral as possible, right?

Ovechkin has always walked his own path in the NHL, though, and it seems he's found a way to change his image once again. Watch below.
What you just saw was a campaign ad for the United Russia party which supports Russian president Vladimir Putin, meaning that Alexander Ovechkin is clearly supporting Russia's violent visit inside Ukraine. I was hoping the "keep politics out of sports" people would jump all over this, but it seems that the anti-war and anti-Russia crowdsa are currently doing a solid job at tearing down Ovechkin's public image right now. Frankly, he deserves all the vitriol.

As per The Guardian's Robert Mackey and Tom Lutz, "Russian business newspaper Vedomosti published images of the Washington Capitals star alongside pro-Putin figures such as Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, the leading parliamentary candidate on United Russia's list, and Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the propaganda network RT." Clearly, no one is advising Ovechkin on his image during the offseason if these are the people with whom he's associating.

It's no secret that Ovechkin and Putin have long been acquaintences if not colleagues. The Capitals star has never denied being a pro-Putin Russian, praising the Russian president at times and helping to raise support for him. With the war still raging in Ukraine, however, this little charade of letting Ovechkin do and say whatever he wants should come to a quick ending. Canada, who has backed Ukraine since the start of the invasion, should stop Ovechkin from entering the country under Immigration and Refugee Protection Act rules for being a key and vocal supporter of the current Russian regime.

If Ovechkin wants to play stupid games, these are the consequences of his actions. There's no right for him to play or work in Canada, so Canada doesn't need to honour his political choices. He made a conscious decision to appear in that campaign ad, and now would be a good time to show him the fallout from that stupid decision.

Of course, Canada won't do that because it would create a slippery slope and look vengeful, but I'd love to see someone put Ovechkin in his place over his political beliefs. Hockey is his profession, but there's a bigger world out there where being on the right side of history - even if he previously spoke out in favour of Putin - plays a role in how people are remembered once their star's shine begins to fade. I was never an Ovechkin fan which I've stated before, but this is yet another reason why I'm no longer supporting the NHL: they said a lot of words about and threw some money at helping the people of Ukraine, but they do nothing to back those words up with actions.

I'll tip my cap to players like Nikita Zadorov, Artemi Panarin, and Dominik Hasek who have spoken out about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities associated with the war. A lot of players won't as part of them and their team's marketing department protecting their public images, but these three men have spoken out bravely in the face of a Russian tyrant in Vladimir Putin. It's a shame that one of Russia's biggest stars can't have some influence on the country's leadership personalities after cozying up to them.

He may have more than 900 goals in the NHL, but I won't be surprised if Ovechkin is booed every time he touches the puck this season over his support of warmongering idiots who think Soviet-era Russia still exists. He's welcome to stand behind whomever he likes politically, but it doesn't mean that we can't remind him of Ukraine's sovereignty and independence at every opportunity. Add in "support of tyrants" to the morally-reprehensible list of alleged bigots, racists, domestic abusers, and rapists that play in the NHL. Again, that's why I'm out.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!