NHL on Record Shootout Pace

What is wrong with a tie game in the first place? One of the best games ever played, the New Years Eve 1976 game between Red Army and the Montreal Canadiens was a tie game. Think of how a shootout would have spoiled that night. A tie was the correect result. This whole business was Gary’s idea to appease the American fans and owners who felt that a shootout would bring more fans to the rink. Well, lets see…I have a hard time seeing a baseball thrown at 100mph, so could we make the ball bigger?…How about painting it red?…To bring more hitting into the game, lets give the hitter four strikes instead of three…Could we move the outfield fences in 100ft so there are more home runs? See how absurd this is? It will never happen, yet Gary is prepared to change the game by making nets bigger, he’s already done it with the shootout and three point rules. I like the stretch pass rule, effectively taking out the center ice line, but there is one rule I wish they would seriously look at. The size of the goaltending equipment has gotten out of hand, specifically the pads. If you look far back into the 50′s and 60′s, the goaltenders looked small in the nets, the net looked like a soccer net. Now, nobody wants to return to those ages, because in reality the goaltenders were severely unprotected. But take a look at the pads the goaltenders wear today. You used to be able to see the goalies pants , but now they are hidden by pads. There is a rule on the width of the pads, but apparently not the height. The pads are designed so that when the goaltender assumes the butterfly position, the tops of the pads come together and form a wall 12-16″” high, taking away the whole bottom of the net. The only way to score low is to hope a shooter slips one under while the goalie is dropping into position, or hope that he is out of position. Get the pads back to a realistic size, the gloves have already been scaled back, and maybe we can see games settled in regulation time more often. Leave the game alone Gary…