Substitute players

The National Hockey League (NHL) held their annual General Managers’ meetings earlier this month.

At these meetings, the NHL’s 32 general managers usually discuss the state of the game of hockey and the league and potential rule changes for future years. Despite not being one of these team managers, I’d like to raise my hand to provide an idea I’ve come up with.

NHL teams are allowed to start games with at most 20 dressed players. Usually, teams are also allowed between two or three ‘healthy scratched’ players. A ‘healthy scratch’ means a player who is not in the lineup because of a coach’s decision rather than due to injury or suspension. Hockey, as it is widely known, is a contact sport and a number of times, a player will leave a game midway through because of an injury. What I’m suggesting is if an injury occurs during a game, NHL teams should be given the ability to substitute a ‘healthy scratched player’ for an injured one during a game.

Baseball rules inspired this idea. During a baseball game, teams can substitute a pinch hitter or pinch runner for a player on the lineup card. Of course, the caveat is, once that player is replaced, they are not allowed back into the lineup for the remainder of the game. This is how I foresee my idea being implemented in hockey as well. To keep it fair, the player being replaced would have to be someone who would not be able to return for the game.

The NHL already has a somewhat similar rule for goaltenders. If both of an NHL team’s goaltenders are injured during the same game, an emergency goalie is called upon at the arena to suit up for that team. This is how David Ayres ended up getting his claim to fame, in a game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Carolina Hurricanes.

On the players' side, this idea is a big win, as it would give up to a few more players an opportunity to have an impact on any given game.

This would also incentivize teams to improve their depth at the forward and defencemen positions. The team with the greater depth in these positions would benefit the most from this potential rule change. This could increase the excitement of future trade deadlines and the free agency period.

Lastly, from my perspective as a journalist, I can imagine the potential for heroic stories. Imagine this, a star player has to leave a game because of an injury. A player is substituted for him, and through all odds, this substitution scores the game-winning goal. The zero-to-hero stories could be legendary.

While I doubt this idea will make it to the NHL level any time soon, I think it could have great benefits to the game if it was ever implemented.