FROM THE GREAT WHITE NORTH: A 5-STEP PROGRAM FOR SAVING THE NHL

by E. Spencer Kyte, Bugs and Cranks

This may come as a shock to most of you, but the NHL is still in existence and some of us (read: Canadians like me) still care about it deeply. Hockey is a religion to us and even if you've never played a game in your life (I haven't) you're still qualified to have lengthy conversations about The Neutral Zone Trap, No Touch Icing and why the Toronto Maple Leafs won't ever win another Stanley Cup.

Since cloning technology is still in it's infancy, generating three or four hundred Sidney Crosby's to fill out NHL rosters isn't an option when it comes to saving the league. Still, it can be done. The Five Step Program to Saving the NHL is after the jump.

Step One: Contraction
That dirty little word that got some Major League Baseball franchises up in arms a handful of years ago needs to be uttered inside the walls of the NHL Offices. Currently sitting at 30 teams, the league should slash six teams, dropping the total to 24 which can then be split into two conferences with two divisions each. You could call one the Campbell Conference and one the Wales Conference and might I suggest you name the divisions Norris, Adams, Smythe and Patrick...

Teams to contract: Atlanta, Columbus, Florida, Nashville, Phoenix and Washington

Step Two: Contraction Draft
The remaining 24 teams get ranked out from 26 to 1 and you start picking up the pieces of the abolished franchises. Using the suggested teams above, here's a list of guys from each team worth keeping around, just so you can see how cool this would be:

• Atlanta Thrashers: Marian Hossa, Ilya Kovalchuk, Bryan Little (remember this name), Tobias Enstrom and Kari Lehtonen
• Columbus Blue Jackets: Gilbert Brule, Dan Fritsche, Rick Nash, Nikolai Zherdev, Ron Hainsey, Rosti Klesla and Pascal Leclaire
• Florida Panthers: Nathan Horton, Olli Jokinen, Rostislav Olesz, Stephen Weiss and Jay Bouwmeester
• Nashville Predators: Martin Erat, David Legwand, Alexander Radulov, Dan Hamhuis, Ryan Suter and Shea Weber
• Phoenix Coyotes: Shane Doan, Martin Hanzal, Peter Mueller, Freddy Sjostrom, Blake Wheeler, Keith Ballard and Zbynek Michalek (just because his name is unpronounceable)
• Washington Capitals: Nicklas Backstrom, Alexander Ovechkin and Alexander Semin

Imagine your team getting to add Alex Ovechkin! Or Kovalchuk! Or Rick Nash! We could get back to the Glory Days of the 80's where teams had more than one good line...

Step Three: Relocation
Now that we're down to only 24 teams, let's put them where they belong okay? No offense, but hockey doesn't belong in Dallas, Tampa Bay, Carolina, Anaheim or LA. Sadly, the last three Stanley Cup Champions reside on that list.

Where to move them: Hamilton (Ontario), Winnipeg (Manitoba), Quebec City (Quebec), Portland (Oregon) and Seattle (Washington)

Since I can only think of five cities that could support an NHL team - and these five could and would - we'll let L.A. keep their team, just the stars (Sandra Bullock, Hilary Duff) can keep turning up at hockey games.

Step Four: Drop the Instigator Penalty
Guess what? There's fighting in hockey... GASP! And there should be too. Hell, there should be more of it, but the league put in a bunch of stupid rules surrounding fighting that makes it damn hard for a guy to drop the gloves when he really needs to, like when, I dunno, some jackass like Steve Downie runs your guy and almost kills him. Yeah, good call NHL, suspending the guy who beats the snot out of punks like Downie...

You know why Wayne Gretzky was able to do the incredible things he did during the 80's? I mean, besides being amazingly talented... Dave Semenko. No one dared touch Gretz because they'd have to deal with "Cement Head" if they did. We need to get back to those days...

Step Five: Fire Gary Bettman
A brief history of his stellar career, if I may:

• Two work stopages (1994, 2004)
• Four teams declaring bankruptcy (LA, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Ottawa)
• Four new teams (Minnesota, Atlanta, Nashville and Columbus)
• Four relocations (Hartford, Winnipeg, Minnesota and Quebec)
• FOX and the Glowing Puck

Add to that Bettman more or less muscling the guy who owns the Nashville Predators (Craig Leipold) into not selling his struggling, money-sucking team to Canadian businessman Jim Balsillie. Oh yeah, he also screwed up Balsillie's wanting to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins too. I always thought the Commish should do what's best for the league, like letting rich guys who own the company that "created" the BlackBerry to buy a team and spend money on a fledgling league. But what do I know...

I know the NHL can be saved. The proof is visible here in Canada, where the major sports networks and CBC carry games on the regular and it's all anyone can talk about from, well, all year. None of this Versus crap and 30 seconds of coverage on SportsCenter.

It's Canada's game, so maybe, just maybe, you should listen to a Canadian... perhaps even me!