Improving offense or crippling defense?

I have generally preferred the offensive side of hockey more than the defensive side. I have also acknowledged that it's the defense that makes the offense so exciting. Unfortunately, the NHL has some serious damage to the defense, resulting in less exciting offensive play.


Before I go much further, I will predictably bash the NBA. In basketball, players have direct control over the ball, and physical contact is not allowed. There is very little the defense can do to legitimately stop a player who has possession of the ball. Instead, they try lesser tactics such as slowing them down and putting bodies in in the best shooting lanes. I don't want to say that defense is meaningless in the NBA, but it's clear that the defense has more to due with the league's abundant scoring than the offense.

We can see pieces of this in the NHL. The league cracked down on penalties. Now, the defense has fewer options to stop or even slow down a player. Offensive players know this, so they don't have to do as much to beat defensive players. The effort has declined, and goals have become far less exciting.

Breakaways are another problem. Now that the league has stopped calling the two-line pass, lazier players wait away from the play in hopes of getting the puck. If they get it, they have more space for their breakaways. When players have defensive pressure, they have to keep moving to stay ahead and get the shot before their opportunity vanishes. Modern breakaways are slower and more deliberate. I would even call them boring.

A lot of scoring in sports comes to a balance between offense and defense. The NHL considers higher scores to be more marketable, so they have been trying to shift the balance to the offense. It's possible to find ways to let offensive players show their skills, but that is not how the current attempts have worked. The NHL has been crippling the defense in hopes of seeing more goals. For those of us who care more about the game on the ice than the game on paper, this means that the sport is being crippled for marketing purposes. I don't support those kinds of changes.