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Comment by m8s | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, the less the referees are involved, the better.

There's a much simpler answer: increase the size of the net. Hockey sticks are pretty incredible these days, and the torque generated from flexing the stick is pretty unbelievable. Playing in net in hockey is mostly about setting up at the right angles and blocking the highest percentage of the net that you can, combined with athleticism and instinct.

But a bigger goal would lead to more goals, if that's the end goal for the NHL.

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I'm a hockey goalie, too. I think we have to think about non-NHL goalies too. Not every adult is 2m high and if we make net size bigger we will effectively make the game unplayable for "average" goalies. When a shooter shoots on you from 3-4 meters, there is not enough time to react too much and you play mostly angles and block. I can imagine that kids playing in a much larger net would lead to a very different game where shooting is much more beneficial than any other option. Yes, NHL is what most people watch on TV, but there are millions of people playing the game that would have it ruined.

There's nothing preventing them from having different sized nets for different levels. Basketball 3-pt lines are different dimensions per level, for instance.

Which is different from soccer. One thing I really like about soccer is the human error element. They don’t use video replays at the highest levels of the game because the game should be exactly the same whether it’s a bunch of kids playing with the only ball in their neighborhood or the World Cup finale.

Kids are playing soccer with all kinds of weird goal sizes, the standard one at the schools I've seen was about 50% the size of the "real" ones. Nobody really talks about it because it doesn't matter as long as it's the same size for both sides.

Kids are also often playing with 1 goal and 1 goalkeeper and 2 teams trying to score (you have to move past half the pitch after regaining possession before shooting)- that way on 1 field you can have 2 games going on at once and only 1 person has to be the goalie in each of these games.

And we've played soccer on random backyards - you just put 2 backpacks as the goalposts and you're ready to go. I think the focus on rules and dimensions is very american, kids just want to dribble and shoot, the score and the minute details aren't important :).

As for replay they were introduced in high-level football last few years. It's called VAR and most fans hate it because it spoils the celebrations after a goal is scored and you have to wait to know if it's really a goal or not.

Not only that, but VAR has consistently produced some shocking and unexplainable decisions. They haven’t quite gotten the implementation correct. Offside calls are improved, dangerous tackle/red card reviews are improved (for the most part, there are still some unexplainable decisions), but handball calls are still shambolic. It’s still a human referee up there in the VAR booth and they don’t have to explain their decision making at all. That’s my opinion, at least- I mostly watch the Premier League.

Premier league has one of the worst VAR I've seen in top 5 leagues. I think Bundesliga does it the best (but still not perfect).

> handball calls are still shambolic.

that's because handball calls are interpretation of intent and slow motion won't help you with that.

So then they changed the rules to ignore the intent and it became a valid strategy for a striker to try to shoot the ball at a defender arm for penalty.

I agree that the rule change is problematic, but no matter what the rule is, it is still unevenly enforced.

They didn’t use video replays at the highest levels of the game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_assistant_referee

Basically every pro sport had that philosophy, until they didn't. Eventually, some highly publicized incorrect call (with video evidence, because it was televised) leads to refs using video replay.

Average top-level soccer game ends something like 2-1 nowadays (maybe 3-1? it's certainly going up with time).

Average semi-professional game ends something like 6-3.

Average kids on the backyard soccer game ends 10-5 or something like that :)

Compared to "real" players kids suck as goalkeepers but so what? They are still having fun. The score doesn't matter that much at that level anyway.

Kids also usually play on smaller fields with smaller goals but it's not mainly because of scoring chance - it's because schools don't have the space and kids don't have the stamina to run for 90 minutes on a full sized football pitch.

I don't think anybody minds weird scores in lower level games.

> Average kids on the backyard soccer game ends 10-5 or something like that :)

He is not talking about backyard kids. He is talking about teenagers and adults playing hockey in hobbyist amateur teams. These typically tend to be much better players then kids in backyard.

These are results of last few matches at regional level that reserve team from my city has played: 5-1, 3-0, 3-4, 11-1, 5-0, 8-0, 14-0

These are semi-professional adults playing on full sized football field with regular sized goals for full 90 minutes.

It's not unheard of to score or lose 20 goals at that level :)

I dont see how that is argument for anything. The bigger net would change it to 40 or something. The complain is not about how many goals happen, but about how the game plays.

Also, I am still not talking about "reserve team". I am talking about hobbyists who want to have some fun while exercising and socializing, who maybe used to play in some team as kids but dropped out never being close to be stars.

Some adults don't just watch sports, they do actively play them.

Problem is that if the net is too big, it will be different game. I was maybe too generic with "kids". Youngsters (cca 10 years and more) are playing in official nets on full size field, so if they were bigger they couldn't catch almost anything that goes directly into any of the corner, or they would have to be away from net extra few meters. This would change game drastically. Especially with young players I think it is much more important to build up chance, pass and "play", not only shoot slapshots from blue line. Also, in non-pro games, there are plenty of goals. There is no need to have much more. If you play on amateur level, like I do now, you would see that there is usually problem to find enough goalies (for many reasons) and with bigger net it would be even worse, because if you are under 190cm you would be there for laughs.

> Youngsters (cca 10 years and more) are playing in official nets on full size field, so if they were bigger they couldn't catch almost anything that goes directly into any of the corner, or they would have to be away from net extra few meters.

Keep in mind that the number of kids who can pick a corner and kick a ball into it consistently is pretty small too.

The skill level of the goalie and the skill level of the kickers will actually likely balance out.

In fully professional adult soccer if you pick the corner further away from the goalie (doesn't matter if high or low) you'll score 99% of the time. It's just that it's very hard to do.

The original article proposed different sized goals for different leagues.

Sure, it may be solution, but there is a lot of muscle memory that is bound to size of goals. If you have goalkeeper in junior league it would be very complicated to pull him up as backup to senior game. Or from lower league to upper one. All the angles and distances would need to be re-trained when switching leagues. I cannot imagine that, really.

I think it would be easier to somehow limit area blocked by goalie equipment together - so if the goalie is very tall, pads would need to be either narrower or not that high to keep some max blocking area. And this is only IF we really need to do some change at all.

I don’t think the goal is necessarily to have more goals, but to reduce the pile up of players around the net.

Maybe it’s my goalie experience speaking, but the highlight of hockey to me was always the direct confrontation between a shooter and the goalie. The more chaotic the goals, the less interesting the sport is.

Inclined to agree. The goals I remember from watching hockey in my youth are the really sexy ones. A risky pass and a breakaway, or some slick skating at the blue line to put some defenders off balance. Also, “just make the goal bigger” sounds a lot like “change the rules so more runs are scored” in baseball. You lose an element of the game you can’t get back when you do that. Maybe that’s a little “old man yells at cloud” but whatever.

I think like the article says, the way you reduce the pileup around the goalie is to make it possible to score from places other than the pileup around the goalie.

Just as the viability of 3-point shooters opened up the floor in the NBA, making it viable to score from the blue line in the NHL would open the ice as well.

When I was a kid in the 80s players would score from the blue line all of the time.

They were still relatively low percentage shots but a guy could absolutely score with a slapper from the blue line. Enough that you had to respect the threat. Not unheard of for a d-man to score 20 or 30 in a year.

As a fan that was fun too! Not as fun as a magical "sexy" Gretzky goal. But you could hear the anticipation in the building when the puck went back to some guy who had a cannon from the blue line. Al Iafrate, etc.

Today, if a defensemen actually scored from the blue line, the team would probably immediately release the goalie and fire the goaltending coach lol. Only reason to shoot from long range is so you can get the puck into the scrum in the slot and hope some something happens from there.

Goals from blue line are not that uncommon even in NHL [1]. Also, hockey is played on many different levels than NHL and trust me, if I got one USD for each goal I got from blue line, I'm doing just fine :)

[1] https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/video/chara-levels-slapshot-blu...

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