Johnny777 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 11:25 pm
The thing that for awhile has confused me with regards the Steelers approach to hockey, is that the noise coming out of the club is that speed and skill is the future of hockey and what “all” fans now want and is the future of hockey and it has moved on from the fights/physicality days and it’s not what people want to see anymore….yet without fail whenever they are advertising or trying to market a big game it’s always clips or images of fights/hits etc that they use to draw interest/ publicise the game….seems a little bit contradictory and have done this for years
In general terms, the game has moved on a lot, and is nowhere near as physical as it once was at all levels. NHL (and by extension the AHL and ECHL) are more physical, but one thing to be considered is that all rinks are the more traditional 56x26, and not the IIHF size of 60x30 (like the Arena). It's part of the reason the game is more physical in terms of contact - less space! NHL is of course the best players in the world so just overall skill in hitting and skating ability allows for more contact without getting too far out of position.
The AHL used to be massively physical but given now is really used to get young high potential players pro experience before the take the step up, the league is way more skill focused these days. The ECHL is still a physical league.
Top Euro leagues (SHL/KHL/NL etc) can be pretty physical but given the automatic game misconducts for fighting, they tend to be a lot of cheap shots. The high ability of the players keeps the physicality up despite the bigger ice.
The biggest change is the way the refs police the game - hooks/slashes are called more often and elbows etc are called. Watch a game from even 10 years ago, and bad hits often went uncalled. Concussion and our understanding of it, is why the clamp down came, and in all honesty, it's much better from a players perspective. So much of the old bravado seems ridiculous when we now know how much concussion can ruin players careers and life outside of hockey.
There's still plenty of good hits, but refs generally manage players emotions better by calling penalties more tightly. It just doesn't get to the boil over/protect ourselves stage as often any more.
