THE GM'S ARE COMING!! THE GM'S ARE COMING!!

And for the love of Dog, somebody hide the rulebook!!! Yes it's time for the NHL's annual Winter Meetings, this year in beautiful (or so we are told) Naples, Florida. The League's 30 GM's gather and discuss pressing issues in the game, and then make a bunch of cosmetic changes instead of fixing the real problems. Today they were split into groups of 4 and given a list of things to discuss. One of the most notable is one being pushed by Ducks GM Brian Burke. It proposes that minor penalties issued in overtime be shortened to 1 minute in length. The thinking here is that a minor penalty ends up being 40% of the OT period, and often leads to the end of the game. Instead of seeing the 2 obvious things: 1) Overtime would be better eliminated, or extended to 10 minutes, and 2) It's a penalty. It's meant to punish the other team and the 2 minutes is a hell of a deterrent if you think about it, they will probably push this through. Kind of a no-brainer Burke wants this one, it will affect his team the most. Another group examined whether or not to expand the shootout to a minimum of 5 shooters from the current 3. Once again, the obvious thing would be to put the shootout back where it belongs: The skills competition of All Star Weekend. So you can be teams like Dallas and Minnesota, whose GM's were in that group will be lobbying hard to win more games by trick shots instead of playing hockey. There's a full article at tsn.ca that has all the details and other proposed changes.