Toronto Maple Leafs: NHL Board of Governor’s Topics Offensively Dumb

The Toronto Maple Leafs are having a great season, and recently lost a game that appeared to be refereed by a small child unfamiliar with the rules of the sport. 

In fact, the Toronto Maple Leafs recently lost a playoff series due to the NHL’s incompetent officiating and on top of that, they had to face to the back-to-back Stanley Cup champions in a first round matchup despite finishing fourth overall in the league.

You would think such stupidity would be the only topic when the NHL Board of Governors meet up to discuss the state of the game.

You would be wrong.

The NHL Is a Horribly Run League

One of the main topics in the news from the Board of Governor’s meeting includes extending the NHL regular season to 84 games in order to have some kind of extra regional rivalries, despite the fact that that’s an old-school way of thinking that no one cares about unless they are 80.

The league couldn’t be more out of touch on this topic. Fans wan to see their team win, and short of that, they want to see the other stars in the league.  NOBODY CARES about playing Ottawa or Buffalo an extra two or three times.

No one cares about this because it’s an extremely outdated idea.  Everyone currently watching sports today grew up in an era of free-agency and Seinfeld.  We do not care about laundry.

The other major topic is the salary cap. They say they are too poor to raise the cap because of Covid.  To this I say, we we all lost money, so shut up.  You sold your soul to gambling and it’s disgusting, wall-to-wall attempts to make every sports fan into an addict.  You put ads on jerseys and helmets, and expanded the league by an extra team.

Crying poor doesn’t fly.  It makes no sense, and when that happens you can be sure a lockout and cancelled games aren’t far behind.  There is four years left on the CBA, and the NHL is saying  that gambling didn’t juice it’s revenue, so enjoy the game of hockey while you can.

These greed-based topics are offensive. They are offensive because there are problems with the game of hockey everyone knows about, and the NHL apparently aren’t even talking about them.

The NHL should be discussing how their playoff format creates first round matchups that are likely superior to the Finals.

They should be discussing a minimum standard of ice quality league wide.  (Toronto is a cold city. Their ice is notoriously bad. I could understand this problem in Texas.  Not Toronto. This should not be OK).

They should be talking about how an MVP candidate on a 22 game point streak can have the puck behind the offensive net and have a stick broken on his hands without a call.

To sum up: I think today’s NHL fans are too sophisticated to care about regional rivalries very much.  I don’t think the NHL has anyone under 145 years old in these meetings or they’d know better.

The NHL needs to do a better job officiating, playoff seeding and  ice quality. All other discussions are irrelevant until these topics are addressed.