Cameron LewisOkay, I think we can all agree that sports aren’t perfect. But if we were going to make any changes to them to make them better, here’s what we would do.
I was watching Hockey Night in Canada last Saturday and at 2:10 of the third period in a 2-2 game between the San Jose Sharks and Vancouver Canucks a mad scramble ensued at the Canucks’ net. Referee Dan O’Rourke stood with a bird’s-eye view of the chaos in the crease and yet he briefly lost sight of the puck and blew the whistle right before Sharks forward Tommy Wingels slid it over the line. The problem is Eddie Lack never had control of the puck, and so what should have been the go ahead goal in a crucial game for San Jose got called off and deemed non-reviewable. Radim Vrbata would score three minutes later and the Canucks held on to win 3-2. So why is that not reviewable? It seems that half the time this happens, the referee admits to the players and coaches that he made a mistake. So why not give him a chance to make the call again? If the whistle has no impact on how the play finishes, the call should be reversed. If the NHL fixed this, more games would finish as they should without controversy and teams like this year’s Sharks might feel a bit better heading into the playoff push. — Dan Guild
The NHL should dump the draft lottery and switch it with an eight-team toilet bowl that dictates the drafting order for the league’s top eight draft picks. The NHL’s current draft lottery format encourages teams outside of the playoff picture to dismantle their rosters in hopes of acquiring the league’s next superstar with the first overall pick. A drafting system that forces already terrible teams to seek out new depths of awfulness is clearly flawed, just ask anyone who has watched a Buffalo Sabres game this season, or an Oilers game at any point over the last five years. A tournament comprised of the league’s worst teams could prevent the tanking that makes watching Sabres, Oilers, and Coyotes games so painful. It would still provide bad teams an opportunity to rebuild their franchise with skilled young players, but it would also give incentive to those same bad teams to make an effort to remain competitive. The tournament could also provide some entertainment value to fans who can only dream of the postseason and could serve as compensation for sticking it out through the dark days of their franchise’s rebuild. — Mike Simion
If there’s one rule that needs changing in sports, it’s bringing some real physicality to basketball. With a league infected by incessant flopping, there would be no better justice than being able to dole out a sucker punch to someone who was just acting as if they just got shot from some slight contact. In a game that seems to increasingly shy away from contact by the year, there would be no more efficient and fitting way to bring some toughness back into the game. In fact, decades ago fighting used to be very prevalent in the NBA, but with low TV ratings and fear of poor public image, the league introduced harsh suspensions for brawls, which essentially took them out of the game. Given basketball’s increased popularity since then, isn’t it time to give fighting another chance? — Jason Shergill
Terrific idea by Mike, the toilet bowl would be very entertaining.