5 NHL rule changes hockey fans want to see implemented in the league

3. Make all penalties major penalties

The NHL has looked for opportunities to increase scoring in recent years. While the league’s average goal rates have been on the rise for the last 10 years, the NHL is still looking for ways to increase the most exciting part of the game: goal scoring.

One way to potentially do so would be to make all penalties assessed in the league major penalties. Currently, the NHL’s penalty system is split into minor and major penalties. During minor penalties, offending players sit in the box for two minutes or less if the opposing team scores on the power play. On major penalties — such as one gets for fighting — a player sits in the box for five minutes and does not return when a goal is scored by the opposition.

This is not to say that the NHL should go five minutes for all penalties, but more-so that players should sit for all two minutes of a minor penalty instead of being allowed to leave when their team is scored upon. Doing so would cause a bit more pain for a team that took a penalty, but would not be as devastating and game-changing as a five-minute major would be for each infraction.

It’s hard to say if doing this would increase scoring by a large amount, but it is radical enough of a change that would case teams to strategize more for both power plays and penalty kills. And it’s an interesting idea too. Penalties themselves are not necessarially in need of fixing right now in hockey, but keeping a player in the box for a full two minutes may give a team a handful of chances to score with a man-advantage that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

There have been other ways to tweak the NHL penalty system to increase scoring — such as making penalties 4-on-3 instead of 5-on-4 — but making a minor penalty a full two minutes of box time is a good first step to doing so.