TIME AND FEVERS: ICE GIRLS AND BLOATED SEASONS (PART 2)

Part 2 in a two-part rant.

So here we are, June 19, two days before the official start of summer, and the Stanley Cup is to be decided tonight, in less than four hours' time.

Hope it's a good one, hope the best team wins, and maybe there'll even be Game 7 overtime in the final for the first time in more than half a century.

However, it doesn't refute a rubric that this space has been on for a while now: there's no logical or rational explanation for why the NHL should be playing in the middle of June. As noted last week, the league has this Cameron Frye complex where no one is able to get it through their head they could do something to alter their situation.

If you follow hockey, you've probably heard someone, within the past week, express something along the lines of, "I just want to see the season get over with."

This is after the NHL's nuclear winter, when there was no season at all. Even after a year off, fans still get sick of hockey when the season drags on until the summer solstice.

The season needs to be shortened. You can stand there and say the NHL will never do it, or that the players' association would never accept a shorter schedule that would bring with it lower salaries. Enough already. This space is always less about, to quote a greater mind than myself, less about seeing things as they are and saying, "Why?" and seeing things that never were and saying, "Why not?"

This kind of ties in with a post that's been in the hopper for a while about Mark Moore's book Saving The Game. Moore is the brother of Steve Moore, the Colorado Avalanche player whose career was ruined by Todd Bertuzzi's criminal assault on March 8, 2004, and his own career was ended by injuries -- at the start of the '03-04 season, he was forced to retire due to post-concussion syndrome.

Mark Moore's book is far-ranging, and since it was written in the dark days of 2004-05 that most of the hockey establishment (with help from the mainstream media) seem so eager to shove down the memory-hole, it already seems like a period piece. There's a number of original ideas, part of which is borne out of Moore having a consciousness that most Canadians (myself included) don't have about the game, since he, his brother Steve and a third sibling, Dominic, came up through U.S. college hockey instead of the meat-grinder of major junior.

One of the author's ideas, for instance, is to cut Canadian junior hockey off at age 19, make it a pre-cursor to college hockey, and hold off on drafting players until they are in their early 20s. Moore also suggests trying to build U.S. interest in hockey by urging more NCAA schools to establish hockey programs.

Attention is also given to the changes in the games over the past half-century -- bigger and faster-skating players, shorter shifts. Moore estimates the typical skater is moving two-thirds faster than in Rocket Richard's day, using this to build a case for the adoption of 4-on-4 hockey. (A position yours truly has come around to.)

Moore also believes the regular season should be shorter. It's been said here before that the regular season should start Sept. 15 (instead of early October), and the season should be trimmed to 72 games, down from the present 82.

Starting in mid-September would take three weeks off the season. Cutting 10 games removes another three. In 2002-03 and 2003-04, which were non-Olympic seasons, the season ended on June 9 and June 7, respectively. With six weeks lopped off the training camp and regular season portion of the season, you could add more time between games.

Moore also believes in shortening the regular season by 10 games, but trumps that with a better idea. Play a couple of tournaments during the season, similar to the mid-season tournaments that are part of college and European hockey. It would enhance the regular schedule, not unlike European soccer's Champions League, or British football's F.A. Cup.

The league could, Moore suggests, play a pre-season tournament -- eight teams, single elimination -- in a Canadian city such as Hamilton or Winnipeg, play another tournament in mid-season, and one in the U.S. around President's Day. Entry would be based on teams' performance over, say, the past 20 games or so.

There would be more incentive to watch the regular season. Teams could redeem a disappointing, also-ran season by winning a major tournament. Another interesting wrinkle: invite AHL or Euro-league teams to take their shot at the NHL clubs.

Bottom line, some of Moore's ideas, combined with a shorter schedule, would solve two problems: the lack of compelling reasons to watch the regular season in and of itself, and the reality that hockey should not be played in June, and that the season should end some time before the May long weekend.

There's no real argument for not doing it, at least not one that can't be stopped easier than a weak backhand from 40 feet out.

But if the season was shorter, my favourite team might have missed the playoffs this year. This is sub-Level One thinking. This year, the Leafs apparently needed a 90-game season to make the playoffs -- or maybe a 30-game season -- but in and of itself, that's not an argument.

Teams will have less time to implement their systems. Silly me. All these years I was watching the Leafs I thought I was cheering for Mats Sundin or Wendel Clark, not their forecheck pattern. Without players and personalities, you have no game. One lesson from pre-lockout hockey was that no sport can be held hostage by whiny, control-freak coaches who micromanage. They will choke the life out of the game if you let them -- just witness the last two minutes of any close basketball game with its half-dozen timeouts.

The PA would never go for it, because it would mean lower salaries. Well, they already agreed to a 24% rollback in exchange for earlier free agency. Besides, with a season that ends in mid-May, and an end to the unnecessarily long six weeks of training camp and exhibition games that are just a cash grab, players would have a longer off-season, with more time to rest and recover from injuries. It would probably extend the life of an average career, and in the long run, players might come out ahead financially.

People still do watch hockey in June. The TV ratings are still high in the areas where teams are still playing. That's a fine way to look at it. Do you ever hear any other sports league try to settle for maintaining interest and an audience only in the areas where teams still have a chance? Shouldn't a sport be compelling even if your team is out of the hunt?

The NFL would be in a snit if the only people who watched last year's Super Bowl lived in the vicinity of Pittsburgh and Seattle. Baseball knows there would be an uproar if the World Series carried into November, instead of being in October, when it has always been held.

Think back to how the Boston Red Sox captured the sports-watching public's attention in October 2004. That was made possible, in part, because baseball has kept its season from becoming overly long, and the public is conditioned to watch baseball take centre stage in October. Not in hockey. As great as the Oilers' run has been to watch, some of the momentum has been sucked out of it, at least from a fan's vantage point, because the NHL has gone way into borrowed time.

Anyway, it's telling that the first time the Stanley Cup final went into June in a season that wasn't affected by an Olympiad or a labour stoppage was 1993 -- the year Gary Bettman became commissioner. There's a lot of reasons why the NHL is a niche sport in the U.S., but you have to wonder about a league that starts its season when baseball is holding its playoffs, goes head-to-head with the NBA, NFL and NCAA through the fall and winter, starts its playoffs when another baseball season is starting, and holds its championship series at the same time as the NBA's -- and in this year, the same time that the World Cup is on.

It's not just dumb. It's also arrogant to assume your audience will just hang in for that long.

To paraphrase something Bill (Spaceman) Lee said on the eve of Game 7 of the '75 World Series, tonight's Oilers-Hurricanes matchup is not The Game. The game is baseball and World Cup soccer right now. The NHL is intruding on their turf.

Bottom line, as riveting as the Oilers' improbable run has been, it would have been better served had the deciding game of the final been played on May 19 -- twenty-two years to the day of the organization's first NHL championship. Wouldn't that have been some nice symmerty.

But no. Not this year, not in the Wonderful World of Bettman and his merry band of bean-counters.

However, maybe in some future spring to come. Why not?

Enjoy the game and please check out the live blog tonight -- and remember, only 10 weeks until the start of training camp.