I like Andrew, but he's off base on a number of things in his article. The first one is his implication that the NLL was trying to sneak something by everyone by releasing the information on a Friday afternoon. It's pretty simple, really. The draft was held Wednesday night. The league held meetings Thursday, at which the rules were finalized. Perhaps they could have released them Thursday evening, but I'm pretty sure everyone was travelling either Thursday night or Friday morning. My guess would be the person putting out the release travelled home Friday morning and sent out the release when he got back.
At any rate, I'm pretty sure they weren't trying to sneak the rules by anyone, for the simple reason that they are very happy with the new rules. They put a lot of thought into them and think they will make the game better. They are also open to tweaking them after they see what impact they actually have.
Further, it takes quite a leap of logic to figure that the rules are anti-Canadian. The hypothesis isn't supported at all by a close examination of the new rules. The mental gymnastics are rather spectacular to allow the conclusion that having 22 seconds in the offensive zone rather than 20 would mean LESS time for the offensive players.
Andrew is, however, spot on about the two feet in the box rule. I see the real emphasis of that rule being that the refs will watch changes more closely and call them more closely. The two feet in the box stipulation will just make it easier to do so. That will lead to more breaks by defenders. The thing is, the defenders who take off for scoring chances should be the same ones who do it anyway, for the most part. Tom Montour isn't going to suddenly break out less frequently. Kyle Sorensen won't stop getting transition chances, he'll get more. Mike Grimes isn't going to be the guy running to the bench to allow for changes, he'll still be the guy running up floor to create chances.
Posted on Oct 2, 2011, 10:56 AM from IP address 216.221.94.162