New Hall of Famer Ken Hitchcock Gave His Ideal Changes for Hockey in 2012

Legendary coach Ken Hitchcock is now a Hockey Hall of Famer, and in this THN issue from our November 2012 edition, Hitchcock detailed how he'd like to see the NHL evolve.

This weekend, we’ve been discussing the Hockey Hall of Fame’s 2023 induction in Toronto – and all of the inductees have been covered in THN’s 76-year history. That includes, in the builder’s category, the late Avalanche GM Pierre Lacroix, and longtime NHL coach Ken Hitchcock.

(Don’t forget, for full access to THN’s 76-year archive, subscribe to the magazine.)

Hitchcock has been very friendly to media over the years, and in our Nov. 12, 2012, issue (Vol. 66, Issue 9) on how prominent figures would change the NHL game, he wrote a story in which he discussed how he’d like to see the game evolve. Hitchcock was coaching the St. Louis Blues at the time, but his identification of problems with the NHL product was right on the money. The newly inducted Hall of Famer’s words in the article speak to his passion for the sport, and he is rightly honored for a lifetime of service to the game.

Vol. 66, Issue 9, Nov. 12, 2012

By Ken Hitchcock

“Players’ and coaches’ passion and skill are at an all-time high and we should sell those intangibles better.”

“When the NHL came out of the lockout in 2004-05, there was a really good plan in place for moving the game forward. We brought foot races back to the sport and that created more forechecking opportunities, more pressure on the puck, more chaos in the game. That’s what I’d like to see more of now. If we can get back to that, we’ll start to eliminate some of the holdups and hooking and grabbing that have crept back in.

They have crept in a little bit each year because the officials can’t call everything. But even before the current lockout, the meetings that took place over the summer gave coaches fair warning the obstruction dial would be reset when the league returned. Coaches and players know it’s coming and that’s why coaches are preparing to work on their special teams because there will be more penalties as everyone gets used to the re-established standard.

Besides that recommitment, the game would benefit if we acknowledge the reality we’re not going to score as much – not because of rules or goalie equipment, but simply because the athletes and coaches we have are so much better today. When you as a coach talk to a 21-year-old player now, it’s like talking to a 28-year-old in terms of their awareness and discipline on the ice. That’s about good coaching in junior and college as well.

Everyone is just so much more complete and competitive, which is why I’d like to see us sell our game for what it really is: emotion and intensity. The score is just a byproduct of that and when you have as many good teams as we do trying to make the playoffs, everything – the scores, the standings – will be very close and competitive.

I’ve been involved in hockey a long time and I’ve never seen the emotion and intensity of all games as high as they are right now. There’s no drop-off between a second- and fourth-line player now or a second- and third-pair defenseman. So I just want to see us sell the intangibles of our sport rather than solely looking at goals for and goals against.

The Hockey News Archive is a vault of 2,640 issues and more than 156,000 articles exclusively for subscribers, chronicling the complete history of The Hockey News from 1947 until today. Visit the archives at THN.com/archive and subscribe today at subscribe.thehockeynews.com