Brian Burke appears to be trying convince the NHL to expand the playing surface from 85 to 90 feet. Currently the NHL is 200 x 85 he thinks the 90 foot wide rink will help the play of the game. International ice is 200 x 100 and some rinks us a hybrid 92 or 94 feet in Sweeden. Burkes reasoning is since players have gotten bigger and the game is so congestive with traps the extra five feet would help.
http://www.tsn.ca/burke-on-a-mission-to ... s-1.425938
Good article and honestly I couldn't agree more with his thinking. But with so many new rinks in the NHL it would be impossible to get all the rinks compliant. Even though Detroits new rink is going to be built with the 90 feet ability. It will be used with the 85 imprint. Burke said it shouldn't be a big deal is a few rinks are larger as Baseball uses fields with different dimensions and even in the old days of hockey a lot of rinks were not one standard size.
Burke wants to increase ice size??
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Jim
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Re: Burke wants to increase ice size??
The pure physical, construction that would need to be done to add 5 feet to each side would make this grossly cost prohibitive. You can not just push the seats/stands back. The stairs are at the angle that they need to be etc. You can not just remove the first two rows because then the new first row would have people's feet at the top of the board/bottom of the glass. Alterations would affect the entire lower bowl of any arena.
If you had the last 10 arenas build to (eventually) allow 90 feet, you would still have 20 that would need retro fitted. The only real option would be to raise the level of the "ice-level" until the angle of the stands allows for 90 feet.
Would bigger ice add to the game, probably. It simply would cost an insane amount of money.
If you had the last 10 arenas build to (eventually) allow 90 feet, you would still have 20 that would need retro fitted. The only real option would be to raise the level of the "ice-level" until the angle of the stands allows for 90 feet.
Would bigger ice add to the game, probably. It simply would cost an insane amount of money.
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Re: Burke wants to increase ice size??
It would have to be grandfathered in. From now on all new arenas would have to be built to 90 feet. But it would take 40 years minimum til all current arenas are built to a 90 foot standard. But right now if a current rink could add another foot, 6 inches to each side. I think they should let them but the thought of making even 1 foot wider would be s huge cost.