Ejections for fighting? 3-on-3 playoff overtime? Olympics rules court is in session

Welcome back to Rules Court, where we’re fixing the NHL, one new rule at a time.

Usually, that means considering your suggestions. But occasionally, we like to look elsewhere for inspiration, such as stealing ideas form other leagues. We’re doing that again today, because as you may have heard, there’s an international tournament going on. It’s called the Olympics, and the NHL was kind enough to send its players over for a change.

That NHL participation has meant that the rulebook used in the Olympics is almost identical to the one we all know and love. Almost, but not quite. As Pierre LeBrun reported last week, the “blended” approach to officiating still left a few differences between the IIHF and the NHL. And that got us wondering: Could the NHL learn something from international hockey?

Let’s see. Pierre’s article included nine differences between the two rulebooks. We’re going to put seven of them on trial today. (We cut the ones about switching ends for overtime and players losing their helmets during play, since they’re relatively minor and we don’t have a “meh” option for our rulings.) 

We convened the usual jurors – Sean Gentille, Shayna Goldman and Sean McIndoe – and cut-and-pasted Pierre’s description of the differences. If at least two of us approve the change, it becomes a new NHL rule, effective immediately. (Editor’s note: That’s not true.) (McIndoe’s note: OK, but it should be.)

While most hockey fans agree that the NHL is a perfectly run league with zero room for improvement, could we still find some inspiration from elsewhere? Let’s find out.

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Ranking the 14 potential Olympic men’s hockey gold medal matchups

With all 12 teams technically still alive in the Olympic men’s hockey tournament entering Tuesday’s qualification games, there are a huge number of possibilities ahead for the medal rounds.

As of this moment, however, there are only 14 gold-medal game matchups, however, that are plausible — which we’re defining as odds of 1 percent or greater.

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Weekend rankings, Olympic edition: Ghosts, bridesmaids, a fight and more

Welcome to the NHL weekend rankings, in which we don’t have an NHL to talk about.

You may have noticed that the league is on hold while some tournament is played over in Italy. It feels like it’s kind of a big deal. People seem to be enjoying it.

OK, so let’s go with the flow. It’s like the old cliché goes: When in Rome, or at least in the same country as Rome, do as every other hockey writer in the world is doing and serve up some Olympic hockey takes.

This week, we’ll take the rough format of the Weekend Rankings you know and love and/or tolerate, and use them for some men’s Olympic hockey observations. We’ll get to the good and bad, but let's start with a few stragglers I'm still working on.

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Let's waste your Friday by building some NHL Olympic all-star teams

 We’re finally watching Olympic best-on-best hockey for the first time in 12 years. And so far, it kind of rules.

The last time the league sent its players to an Olympics, I wrote a piece where I picked the ten best NHL Olympians. The idea was to weight both sides equally – NHL success, and Olympic success – and rank the best of the best. It's been so long that I’d completely forgotten about that piece, and only stumbled on it recently. And it kind of made me want to revisit it.

Of course, there’s a problem: All these years later, we don’t have much in the way of new information to work with. So clearly, another top ten won’t do. We have to do what we do best around here: Take something that should be simple, and make it more complicated for no good reason other than it seems fun.

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NHL weekend rankings: A blockbuster trade, a midseason rankings reset, and more

Let’s get you caught up on all the NHL action you missed over the weekend.

There wasn’t any.

Cool, good column. See you next time.

OK, we won’t wrap it up quite that quickly. But with most teams getting only a couple of games in since this time last week, don’t expect any major changes in the rankings.

Instead, let’s use this week as a bit of a reset and regroup before the rankings take a few weeks off. For example, now would be a good time to look at which teams have been on which lists so far this year.

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