Last year, I did an offseason survey of NHL fans filled with fun, light-hearted and predictions-based questions.
One of the biggest pieces of feedback I got from The Athletic’s commenters is that they’d prefer survey questions geared more toward the state of the NHL. It makes sense because fans are the lifeblood of this sport yet their voice isn’t often heard when it comes to the league’s hot-button issues and future direction.
Our 2024 offseason survey, which collected the opinions of nearly 15,000 fans, aimed to change that. Here are the results of the poll.
Right off the bat, I wanted to get fans’ take on the league’s “hard” salary cap because it has a massive impact on roster construction and player movement. The way teams operate would radically change if the cap system was ever tweaked.
The majority of fans support the league’s hard cap, but it wasn’t as high of a number as I thought. Nearly a third of NHL fans are open to the idea of an NBA-style “soft” salary cap.
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The NBA cap system is very complex and convoluted but in practice, it’s essentially a middle-ground between the NHL’s hard cap and MLB, where there is no cap at all. NBA teams can use salary cap exceptions (there are 11 of them) to spend over the cap. For example, “Bird rights” give teams an allowance to exceed the cap for the purpose of re-signing their own free agent if they meet certain criteria. They also have other exceptions like the mid-level and biannual ones that allow teams to sign players up to a certain salary limit, even if they’re already over the cap. The luxury tax system, meanwhile, is designed to deter teams from spending astronomically over the cap compared to others.
Overall, though, most fans seem satisfied with the NHL’s current cap system.
The debate around the NHL’s long-term injured reserve rules reached a fever pitch this year.
For the second season in a row, the Vegas Golden Knights placed Mark Stone on LTIR for a legitimate injury, leveraged the financial relief to make roster additions at the trade deadline and then activated Stone for Game 1 of the playoffs when the salary cap disappeared. Vegas, of course, isn’t the only contender that’s done this.
In the 2020-21 shortened season, Nikita Kucherov underwent hip surgery and was placed on LTIR for the entire regular season, which gave the Lightning massive cap relief. Kucherov was back for Game 1 of the playoffs when the cap disappeared and the Lightning ended up winning the Stanley Cup.
Many fans have argued that while these injuries are legitimate, the timeline for return has been massaged to circumvent the cap. The league and team general managers aren’t showing much appetite for change, but over 83 percent of fans believe the LTIR rules should be tweaked to prevent potential circumvention.
The recent success of Florida, Tampa Bay and Vegas has sparked a debate over whether no-state-income-tax teams in the U.S. have an unfair advantage in signing players for below-market-value prices.
The results show a close split, but a combined 56.2 percent of respondents ultimately believe the advantage isn’t significant enough to warrant complex rule changes (41.5 percent) or that the issue is overblown (14.7 percent).
Colleague Eric Duhatschek wrote an excellent piece breaking this topic down and why it likely isn’t a drastically unfair advantage.
Nearly 90 percent of respondents say that they’ll watch 4 Nations Face-Off tournament games next year, when Canada, United States, Sweden and Finland will compete in place of the NHL All-Star Game in February 2025. The tournament looks intriguing enough to hook eyeballs, at least among established hockey fans, but the level of emotional investment/excitement within that group is pretty evenly split — some are hyped, others are more indifferent.
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The prospect of seeing Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby together with Team Canada or a stacked new American roster is scintillating but with just four countries and only NHL players involved, it will likely have a watered-down feel to it. The stakes and global spotlight will also, of course, pale in comparison to Olympic best-on-best hockey.
Still, this should be a fun appetizer for the NHL’s return to the Olympics in Milan in 2026. Most importantly, it’s way more exciting than your typical All-Star week.
Canada’s recent track record in best-on-best hockey is formidable — they won the 2016 World Cup of Hockey and have captured gold in three of the last four Olympics that featured NHL players. Between McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, they boast arguably the three best players on the planet.
However, the U.S. team is loaded with elite talent up front and on the backend too, plus has a significant advantage between the pipes with options including Connor Hellebuyck, Thatcher Demko, Jeremy Swayman and Jake Oettinger. Canada, on the other hand, doesn’t have a star goaltender and will likely pick from names like Jordan Binnington, Adin Hill and Stuart Skinner.
Canada still has the edge in this poll, but they’re much closer to being neck-and-neck with the U.S. in roster quality than they are being clear favorites.
The 4 Nations Face-Off will use a 3-2-1 points system for games — 3 points for a regulation win, 2 points for a win in OT/shootout, 1 point for a loss in OT/shootout and 0 points for a loss in regulation.
With an extra point on the line in regulation, a 3-2-1 points system would incentivize teams to play more exciting hockey late in games. Nowadays, the last five to 10 minutes of a tied game in the third period can be a slog because both teams stop taking risks and are playing to get to an overtime/shootout where they’re guaranteed at least a point each. That would likely change, especially for teams further behind in the standings who could really use the extra point from a regulation win to make up ground in a playoff race.
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Overtime and shootout results are more flukey than regulation hockey because of their gimmicky nature but those wins currently count the same as regulation ones. Switching to a 3-2-1 system would reward teams that can win without needing extra time.
Our poll shows that an overwhelming majority of fans would support the NHL switching to a 3-2-1 points system.
Commissioner Gary Bettman said in June the NHL isn’t ready to begin a formal process for expansion yet. He’s acknowledged the interest from several markets, though, and hasn’t shot down the possibility of it in the future. Couple that with the enormous financial reward that NHL owners would receive from expansion fees and there’s a good chance we’ll see the league expand beyond 32 teams at some point down the road, even if it’s not currently imminent.
Only 35.5 percent of fans are in favor of further league expansion. In hindsight, I wish I included a follow-up question in the survey asking the fans that voted “no” why. I suspect some of the reasons have to do with 32 teams being a symmetrical number for setting up divisions and playoffs, concerns with the talent pool being diluted, skepticism that certain markets (eg: Atlanta) can succeed and maybe even some subconscious bias against expansion because the draft typically involves fans losing a decent player from their favorite team.
Years of unstable ownership and a laughable arena situation necessitated the Coyotes’ relocation to Utah. Does the Arizona market deserve another chance in the future?
Many fans seem to believe Arizona can support a team under better ownership and arena circ*mstances but other markets should be prioritized first if the league considers future expansion. That’s a sensible take because while the state’s rapidly growing youth hockey pool and Phoenix’s status as one of the largest cities in the U.S. make it an attractive market, the reality is they aren’t close to having a viable arena situation and the local market hasn’t demonstrated it can successfully support an NHL team (even though the previous circ*mstances were bad).
Last fall, the NHL discussed potential rule changes to three-on-three overtime. A combined 65.8 percent of fans are open to three-on-three overtime rule changes in some capacity. The most popular suggestion by far is an NBA-style over-and-back rule where after you gain the red center line, you can’t skate the puck back into your own half of the ice. This tweak would be designed to prevent teams from constantly regrouping which has slowed down the tempo and excitement of overtime.
The KHL is experimenting with this new rule this season, so that should be a decent litmus test for whether it’s an effective approach or not.
We have our first look at the KHL's new OT rule during play 👀
Players can't skate the puck back into their own half of the ice without risking a penalty.
(via @khl_eng)pic.twitter.com/nHcDqRbOXU
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) August 6, 2024
Expanding overtime to 10 minutes was the most popular answer, but I’m a bit surprised it wasn’t by a more lopsided margin. A 10-minute OT should result in fewer games being decided by a shootout. OT isn’t perfect, but many (including myself) would rather see a game end that way rather than a shootout, which feels like even more of a gimmick.
One of the most common arguments against OT expansion is that it would increase the physical toll on star players during an already long regular season.
NHL officiating graded out as middle of the road, with a three out of five being the most common score and an average score of 2.8. This range of responses makes sense — hockey is a very fast, difficult-to-officiate sport and it’s becoming harder with the noticeable increase in embellishment — but some areas can unquestionably be improved as well.
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“Inconsistency” was the biggest complaint among respondents with an unsatisfactory rating for officials. The issue here is that an infraction called a penalty at one moment in the game might go completely uncalled the next time, which means players, coaches and teams don’t have a consistent standard to follow. Game management and make-up calls were also common complaints among dissatisfied respondents.
Fans may have some gripes about the league, but there’s no denying the sport itself is in excellent shape.
Nearly 85 percent of voters rated this era of NHL hockey as a four or five out of five entertainment-wise. The game today is exceptionally fast and skilled, and scoring has increased from a decade ago. It is less physical and rivalries may not be as fierce as they used to be, but the intensity of playoff hockey is still electric.
(Photo by Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
Harman Dayal is a staff writer for The Athletic NHL based in Vancouver. He combines NHL video and data analysis and tracks microstats as part of his coverage. Follow Harman on Twitter @harmandayal2
