YAY! The Hockey Lockout is Officially OVER, as the NHL owners met and unanimously approved the new six-year Collective Bargaining Agreement between the league and the players. Who won this? THE OWNERS, that’s who, because they got a salary cap in place, where players will get 54% of total revenues.
In addition, there will be some rules changes, as well as the new logo (pictured here) to help bring back fans:
• NO MORE TIES: Enough of this “kissing your sister” routine. There will be a shootout at the end of regulation during regular season games. Hockey purists will likely cringe, but I believe this sport had to make this major change in order to survive. Leave the draw bulls**t to soccer!
• SMALLER GOALIE PADS AND TRAP ZONE AREA: Let’s face it, guys like Patrick Roy, Dominik Hasek, and Curtis Joseph were damn good, buy Roy (especially) had some pads that were a wee bit oversized, and a lot of teams bitched to the league about it. In addition, goalies could play anywhere behind the goal line to gain control of the puck. Now they will be restricted to a trapezoidal area defined by lines that begin 6 feet from either goal post, and extend diagonally to points 28 feet apart at the endboards. If they play the puck outside that area, they will be hit with a delay-of-game penalty (2-minute minor).  Now we’ll see how the current crop of goalies perform.
• LARGER ATTACK ZONES: The Blue Lines have been moved to 75 feet from the end boards, this increases the size of the attack zone. The goal line has been moved back 2 feet, to 11 feet.
And that’s just for starters. More rules changes are located at NHL.com. Now the ‘Yotes will have to learn how to win games, that’s for sure! I can finally await the arrival into town of my beloved Detroit Red Wings!