As for your experience, games can still be exciting by my standards, not just as often as they used to be. There are also games I would consider slightly dull that others wouldn’t. The game you mentioned with the Capitals and Senators, the Capitals have some of the best scoring talent in the league, and the Senators are one of the worst teams defensively, so it was probably a more wide open game than most games.

Nevertheless, Im sure you did see some exciting games. But if you have access to games from say 2006 through 2009, if you compare the average game then to the average game now, I believe you’ll find the games were much more exciting back then. Its interesting actually, Im starting to get backed up on this notion a little bit, even from players. I was recently sent this short blog by the San Jose Sharks beat writer, that was published a week or two after I wrote this article. You can see it here. http://blogs.mercurynews.com/sharks/2011/11/27/dan-boyle-“the-game’s-changed-the-neutral-zone-is-pretty-much-eliminated-which-is-where-i-get-a-lot-of-my-offense/

In the article a skilled defenseman for the Sharks basically complains about the same things I talked about in this blog. But for him, as a player, he’s not complaining that his games aren’t as fun to watch, he’s complaining that it’s not as fun to play, that its frustrating because it’s harder to be creative and there is no room in the neutral zone.

As for the screenshot of the Lightning game, no the complete stoppage is atypical. Like I said in the blog, that was an exaggerated example of the underlying problem. It took such an obvious example like that for people to take notice of the problem and start discussing it. So no, players dont usually stop playing completely. they still try to move the puck up the ice, the big difference now is that it’s much more difficult, there is much less space, so most teams usually just resort to dumping it in.

Thanks again for the comment. I hope I’ve done alright answering your questions. Feel free to follow me on twitter if you’d like to be notified of new posts, and let me know if you have any more questions.

That photo you have of the Lightning – Flyers game with the players standing around looking at each other. Does that happen a lot? I can’t believe that… I mean, not for a second have I seen anything like it. How long do they stand there, anyway?