Yarimurray, yes I am a goalie (and I wear pretty big gear) so my views may be slightly biased. However, it seems that the last few years goalies have taken alot of heat for the league's percieved(sp?) problems. It is often noted how goalies are cheating, cheating is rampant, ect. But goalies have not been cheating. They have been maximizing the potential of their equipment WITHIN the rules. I reluctantly agree that the pants and upperbody pads have gotten somewhat out of hand, and could be changed somewhat, certain aspects of the new leagues specs have addressed things that are and have been non-issues. For example. The thickness of the knee stacks has been reduced to 2 1/2 inches thick. The purpose of these stacks are to support the knee when dropping down into a butterfly. This eliminates the strain on ligaments in the knee and leg. 2 1/2 inches isn't really too unreasonable, but it was not an issue that needed to be addressed. These blocks sit behind the pad, and not ONCE have I seen a puck stopped by these knee stacks.

One of the most foolish things they are doing is reducing the width of the pads from 12" to 11". This will have literally no impact on modern style goaltenders and will just cost manufacturers thousands to make new dies and patterns, they will have to retool their systems. It will create issues for lower level teams and individual goalies when these rules trickel down.

As I said before, when they compare modern equipment to the smaller equipment of the past, they forget that players shoot much harder today, and that early goalie equipment was horribly underprotective.

As far as changing the size of the nets, that is completely disrespectful to the games heritage and will put an asterisk any records broken after the change over. Sidney Crosby, a prospect who is anticipated to be better than Gretzky himself, will not have the chance to break those records under the same circumstances and will lessen any accomplishments he can complete.

Lazy, I agree with you 100%, the league manangement is completely out of touch with the fans and they are worried about nothing but money. If the lockout didn't prove that (which it did) then these coming rule changes would.

Its not all bad news for hockey, especially for us Flyers fans. The Flyers AHL affiliate, the Phantoms, just won the Calder Cup. The ECHL affiliates, the Trenton Titans, won the Kelly Cup. I am happy to say that I attended the Cup-winning game for the Phantoms, and that the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia has a nice cigar store, Holt's Cigar Club. I bought a celebratory cigar for after the game, a Holt's Classic. A lil bland, not bad though, it was something like a Macanudo.