I am writing a story on The State of the Game involving a look at the problems of the modern game and a look at the evolution of NHL rules. Perhaps you can shed same light on the 1943 introduction of the red line. It would have been easier for the NHL to simply allow passing over the blue line without adding the new red line. What considerations led to the red line's creation? Was this a careful consideration of maintaining a proper balance between offense and defense, a desire to not create a bunch of goal hangers. I am seeking cold hard facts here and all I have now is speculation. Do you know of any resource available which can enlighten me to the mindset of the "powers that were" who created the red line. Is there an NHL equivalent to the Continental Congress' records of the constitutional convention?
George, it'll be tough to get anything much more specific than speculation. The precise reasoning behind NHL rule changes is often murky, especially when we're talking sixty years ago. We can speculate that the centre red line was meant to limit the offensive potential unleashed by allowing forward passing from the defensive zone into the neutral zone; currently, of course, in the midst of the NHL's dismal goalscoring drought, there's a lot of talk about doing away now with the centre red line, allowing "long-bomb" passes all the way to the opponents' blue line in order to perk up scoring. But why it was at that point -- 1943-44, amid the NHL's wartime goalscoring glut -- that the league decided to open up the offence even further, well, that's a bit of a mystery. Charles Coleman, in his "Trail of the Stanley Cup" (vol. 2), mentions that part of the rationale was to reduce stoppages for offsides. This, I think, is what's really meant when you see references to the red line "speeding up the game": not so much speeding up the tempo of play, as is usually inferred from the phrase, but literally, getting the game over with faster, the way you've heard so many suggestions in recent years for doing the same with baseball. Boredom, here, was not the factor, but rather the exigencies of WWII, during which, in seemingly every non-war-related domestic activity, speed was of the essence. It was during these same years that regular-season overtime was discontinued in the NHL, to better ensure that games would end "on time" and teams would meet their train schedules and so on. I'm sure the NHL has the minutes of its meetings somewhere in its archives, but it's highly doubtful those records feature the kind of detail you'd need to answer your question, doubtful again anyone at the league office could locate them, and more doubtful still they'd let you see them even if they *could* find them. Bill Fitsell, author of "Hockey's Captains, Colonels & Kings" and eminence grise of the SIHR, is one good authority on this era and in particular on the evolution of blue line and offsides rules (both those rules that were implemented and some bizarre proposals that never were).
