NHL Better Off With Smaller Rink, Says Igor

Those who complain about the quality of NHL hockey often point to the size of the rink as a big problem: too small, like playing in a phone booth, no room for creativity, etc.

But one of hockey's smartest players thinks otherwise. Igor Larionov prefers the smaller NHL rink.

Igor knows a thing or two about the game, having led the Soviet team that dominated the world in the 1980s before winning three Stanley Cups in North America. He tells the Toronto Globe and Mail he was not impressed by the Russian League during his recent trip to Moscow:

"It's different hockey, obviously. It's the big rink. I actually made some suggestions to the Russian media - that I think it would be more fun and more interesting to play on the smaller North American ice rinks because there's more action. I was surprised to see them playing more of a North American style. I saw so many of those dump-ins, there was not much creativity. It was just play the simple way. There were one or two passes and then the next play, you dumped it in. You can't really judge the league or the style of play by watching two games, but I was disappointed."

Meanwhile, a star from a different era is backing another common complaint: Guy Lafleur says the NHL is too big. "I really believe they should cut back to 24 (teams) to make hockey better," says Guy.

That's interesting, coming from a man who took advantage of the most talent-thin era in NHL history. In 1975-76, when Lafleur won his first scoring title, the NHL and rival World Hockey Association combined to ice 32 teams, all drawing on a talent pool that included almost nobody from Europe or the United States.

But don't tell that to all those hockey fans who grew up in the 1970s. Fuzzy nostalgia for a dubious "golden age" is another common quality among today's hockey reformers.

A bigger rink and fewer teams might help the NHL game. But both ideas have been around for so long that they qualify as empty conventional wisdom, refrains trotted out without much thought, or, in Lafleur's case, without much awareness of his own era.