Norm, welcome to the site! Thanks for writing in, and pardon our delay in replying. We recognise your name from the alt.hockey boards, where you were a voice of calm and reason amid the often moronic shouting of others.
A lengthier answer to your question will be coming up soon in a new piece on our News page, but you can anticipate the bottom line: no ugly, radical debasemants of the game, no unwieldy new rules, no carnival stunts, not enlarging the rinks or the nets, nor erasing the red line, nor enacting anti-defence rules, nor resorting to shoot-outs, nor anything like it. There are a dozen subtle little bits of tinkering that would all help in subtle little ways, but only two things need to be done to substantially improve the game and to increase scoring to reasonable levels: reduce the size of goalie equipment to pre-1990 proportions, and call the game by the book. More than anything else, it's goaltenders, god luv 'em, whose Transformer gear now covers 22 square feet of the net by itself, and the NHL-sanctioned clutch-and-grab and interference, that have stifled scoring over the last ten years. Return goalie equipment to protection-only standards and whistle down the obstruction, and you'll have what you want in terms of scoring and excitement.
I vehemently agree that the game needs to be called by the book. But I think it's even more important than you implied. It is FAR more important than the size of goalie equipment, which to me is one of the more overrated reasons why scoring is depressed. It is hard to tell, since the increase in size has coincided with the decrease in penalty calls, so it's hard to say which contributes more. But I think calling the rules as they are would do far more to increase scoring than reducing equipment size.
