Please NHL, Don't Bring Back The Redline

With word this week that some NHL General Managers are trying to get the two line pass reinstated into the rule, it is incumbent upon us concerned hockey fans to ensure that they do NOT take this ridiculous action. Hockey is a far more entertaining game when you open it up with no red line, in no small part because it makes the neutral zone trap less effective. How is it going to be better for the game to return to the dead puck era? Is that what we are trying to accomplish? Bring back clutch and grab, bring back to red line, increase the incentive to trap, reduce scoring, and change hockey back into soccer. To Peter Chiarelli, the red line would not have prevented Marc Savard's injury, so get over it.

 If the GMs want to introduce no touch icing, remove the goalie trapazoids in the corners, and increase fines for headshots; great, this hockey fan has no objection to that. Look at evolving equipment technologies, and find innovative ways to reduce head injuries, but launching a new dead puck era to deliberately slow down the game and thus its entertainment quality is the wrong move. Please don't do this.  Removing the red line was a great idea, reinstating the red line is a terrible idea. For crying out loud, a simple chin guard on helmets could do far more to curb head injuries than stupid 2 line passes.

Just because there have been more reported head injuries, does not mean that there are more head injuries. Every time somebody gets a headache now it becomes a "concussion symptom", and team doctors are being so paranoid that they are diagnosing more head injuries that in previous years would have gone undiagnosed. Put money and research into the prevention and treatment of head injuries, be more cautious  with injured players, but don't ruin the game just because Sidney Crosby got his bell rung.