Merger announced:

PuckHog first victim of contraction, beats out Ottawa, Buffalo and Atlanta

Washington, D.C. - A tearful Gary Bettman bid farewell to a pioneer in niche weblogging earlier today, as the Puck Hog web log merged with HockeyPundits.com.

It is hoped that the combination of the two teams, under the HockeyPundits banner, will lead to a new puckblogging dynasty. Faithful readers (and hapless passersby) are encouraged to root for the new home team...

Next up: Seatbelts at the NHL arenas: Two morons sustained minor injuries and were taken to a hospital after falling about 15 feet from the stands onto a concrete walkway in Columbus.

This was the same arena that saw a puck strike a child, inadvertently killing her, last year. As a result, arenas now have annoying nets around the ends which obscure the view for fans who can actually afford to come to games.

I don't mean to belittle that previous incident. I do mean to warn that a risk-averse league is bound to over-react to this incident.

Look for lap-belts in your NHL seats next year.

Economist lambastes NHL rule changes: Jason Abrevaya, an associate professor of economics at the Krannert School of Management and a specialist in econometrics, has been researching the effects of the NHL's new rules designed to cut down on tie games.

"Generally speaking, American sports fans don't like ties," Abrevaya says. "After the game is played for two or three hours, they like to see a winner."

Among major sports, hockey is the only major professional sport in which ties pose a significant dilemma, Abrevaya writes. In the NHL, roughly one out of every seven regular-season games between the 1995-96 and 1998-99 seasons ended in a tie.

"Prior to the 1999-2000 season, the NHL awarded teams two points for a win, one point for a tie and zero points for a loss," Abrevaya says. "The total number of points accumulated by a team dictates final standings, making the playoffs and seeding."

Before the 1999-2000 season began, the league instituted two rule changes:

1. A team that loses in overtime receives one point.

2. Overtime is played with four, rather than five, skaters (plus the goalie).

"The rule changes had the intended effect of reducing the number of ties in overtime games," Abrevaya says. "Before the rule change, 71.1 percent of overtime games ended in ties. After the rule change, only 55.5 percent of overtime games ended in ties."

In econometric terms, the change is considered statistically significant.

There also was less willingness to settle for a tie and more aggressive play, with a 37.5 percent increase in shots on goal in overtime (5.46 shots on goal in overtime versus 3.97 shots on goal before the rule change).

Abrevaya says from a marketing point of view, this is good for the league.

"A sports league's main objective is to increase and maintain demand for its product by providing excitement and enjoyment to its fans."

The unintended consequence, though, was that there was a 12.1 percent increase (19.8 percent before the rule change and 22.2 percent with the new rules) in the number of overtime games.

"All else being equal, the potential for the available larger pie makes an overtime game an appealing outcome for teams," Abrevaya writes.

Abrevaya is most interested in the incentive effects of the changes for teams.

"There is a perverse incentive for teams to play to reach overtime," he says. "Had the likelihood of reaching overtime remained constant, a more desirable drop in the percentage (from 14.1 percent to 11 percent) of ties would have been achieved."

In Buffalo, the NHL plays hard ball with Sabres bankruptcy: In return, Reason's Jeff Taylor asks, "Who Gives a Puck?"

Another coach bites the dust: On Wednesday, Bob Hartley of the Colorado Avalanche became the third NHL head coach to be dismissed in the past month. He was replaced by Tony Granato, who has never coached before.

The National Post gripes:

There is a strong case to be made that neither San Jose's Darryl Sutter nor Calgary's Greg Gilbert deserved a pink slip. But the Avalanche's move was even more questionable. Mr. Hartley led the Avalanche to the Western Conference finals in each of his four full years in Denver, and the team won the Stanley Cup the season before last. Under his watch, the Avalanche had a win-loss ratio of nearly 2:1. Now, he has been replaced by Tony Granato -- a recently retired player whose only coaching experience consists of 31 games this season as an assistant. Like other GMs who fire their coaches mid-season, Colorado's Pierre Lacroix has taken the path of least resistance: It's easier to change one coach than 20 players.

Rangers trade for mediocre veteran goalie: With Mike Richter gone for the season, the NY Rangers traded forward Rem Murray, defenseman Tomas Kloucek and the rights to defenseman Marek Zidlicky to Nashvile for goalie Mike Dunham.

So the Rangers will replace one injury riddled veteran with... another veteran, nowhere near as talented, who also gets injured all the time. Hooray!

LCS' analysis comes down pretty hard on the Rangers:

Richter isn't the only injured Ranger. Pavel Bure could be done for the year. Brian Leetch is out for what looks like an extended period of time. And Eric Lindros is always one hit away from an extended vacation at Sunshine Acres.

Since the Rangers are already thin throughout the organization (and have just traded away three more players while getting one in return), they made another trade Thursday night, acquiring forward Josh Green from Edmonton for a conditional pick in the 2004 draft.

Yay.

But pulls no punches with the Predators either:

Predators GM David Poile couldn't have made a worse trade if he's shipped his one tradable player for a bucket of used pucks and a moth-eaten Rangers jersey. ... these players may turn out to be greatness eventually. But this team doesn't have eventualities. They need results. Now. Only Murray is positioned to deliver on that. And in their current state, it will take a great deal more than a single player to make a difference on this team.

Plainly put in a cliché: Poile had one shot and he blew it.

With all those quizes, it had to happen sooner of later:




Take the Which NHL Star Are You? Quiz

Marketing the NHL: LCS has some important ideas on marketing hockey and the NHL, following in the footsteps of the National Basketball Association's rise to power in the nineties. My favorite one is this:

Fair or not, some biases are currently working against hockey players. Even now, in the 21st century, the public's image of a hockey player is a large, oafish Neanderthal with a stick who has five teeth in his head and cannot string as many words together in a sentence. Granted, many hockey players are missing some teeth, but most put in fake teeth when they aren't playing. And besides, anyone who claims that hockey players are eyesores and uncharismatic clearly have not seen the wives and girlfriends that hockey players snag: Janet Jones, Carol Alt, Pamela Anderson, Anna Kournikova, that older sister from Full House now that she's all grown up and stuff. The list goes on and on. If hot, leggy supermodels find hockey players and LCS Hockey correspondent attractive, then there has to be something marketable there that Madison Avenue can exploit. At this point, the only way to refute old stereotypes is for the viewing public to actually see hockey players acting in commercials. Unlike Gary Thorne at the beach, the more exposure these players can get, the better.