The NHL’s general managers will meet next week for their annual assessment of the state of the game. While it remains to be seen what exactly is discussed and what changes come about, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported Saturday on a few items likely to be be part of the managers’ conversation.
“One thing that is on the radar all of a sudden is having to fight after non-penalized hits, or cleaner hits,” Friedman said Saturday during Hockey Night in Canada’s 32 Thoughts segment. “I understand that there is a growing dislike with this phenomenon. You know, there is something in the rulebook — it’s called the instigator (rule). You don’t have to change the rules.
“But I have heard that there are quite a few general managers, and some people in the league, who feel that maybe this should be put an end to, and if a player delivers a clean hit, they shouldn’t have to fight. I know there’s a ton of fans who feel the same way about it.”
Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek added that one other item that could be tabled during the GM meetings is sorting out how best to handle complex trades.
“Another thing is the idea of the three-way trade right now, specifically with one team holding money for another,” Marek explained Saturday. “There have been some awkward moments, some tricky moments between teams, whether it’s the (Nick) Bonino deal — San Jose, Montreal, waive the no-trade, get to Pittsburgh. I think there might be a conversation at the GM meetings about what to do about this.”
The league saw four significant three-team trades in the lead-up to the 2023 trade deadline: the deal that sent Bonino to from San Jose to Pittsburgh, with help from Montreal, as mentioned above; the deal that sent Patrick Kane from Chicago to the New York Rangers, with the Arizona Coyotes helping facilitate by taking on a portion of the salary-cap hit; the deal that sent Dmitry Orlov from Washington to Boston, with help from Minnesota; and the deal that sent Ryan O’Reilly from St. Louis to Toronto, also with help from Minnesota.
“As of right now, it’s not officially on the agenda,” Marek said of the league’s trade procedures being discussed at the upcoming meetings. “But a GM can certainly raise it, and someone I talked to today said, 'You know, it might be about time that we clean things up. We’ve used a trade call going back to the Eric Lindros trade, back in 1992 — maybe we need to update the way we do this.'”
In his latest 32 Thoughts column, Friedman also mentioned lengthy trade-related sabbaticals and decreasing the pre-season as items that could potentially be discussed at the meetings as well.
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