Going Down the Rabbit Hole With the NHL Rulebook

The free thinkers are running the National Hockey League this week. General managers and other NHL brainiacs are gathered near Toronto for three days of experimental hockey.

A handful of players have been hired as the lab rats. They'll skate, shoot and score while the GMs look on and evaluate the results. The goalies will wear smaller pads. The red line will be ditched. Icing rules will be reworked and line changes limited. They'll try three-on-three overtime and shootouts.

Even more radical schemes and crackpot theories will be put to the test. The league will try the bigger nets designed by the Buffalo Sabres. Boston's Mike O'Connell wonders if the blue line has outlived its usefulness. In one scrimmage, goalies will be forbidden from handling the puck at all - except, presumably, when someone shoots it at them.

It seems everyone has a brilliant idea to reform hockey, a magical breakthrough that will turn every game into the 1980s Oilers versus the 1970s Canadiens. We've compiled a master list of potential NHL rule changes, and it is quite the motley assortment. Given the sudden ascension of the hockey radicals and the NHL's desperation to win fans back when the lockout finally ends, there is no telling what this game might look like in a few years.