from Dave Feschuk of the Toronto Star,

Sometimes it seems like an unstoppable NHL cycle. As players get bigger and faster, time and space shrinks.

As skill levels edge higher, scoring stagnates. The game’s craftiest players often can’t find enough room to showcase their talents. Meanwhile, the punishing grind keeps injury rates high, even though training and treatment get ever better.

The solution is simple to name and far harder to implement: Expand the ice surface. But given that an arena building boom came and went in the 1990s and 2000s with the league sticking to its standard 200-by-85-foot footprint, it’s been said the moment for that discussion passed many years ago.

Or maybe it hasn’t. There’ve been whispers of late that there’s an appetite in some NHL circles for a move to larger ice surfaces. With at least a couple of franchises planning the construction of new rinks, bigger ice is again being brainstormed.

“There are a couple of teams that are building new arenas that want to do it,” Mathieu Schneider, the NHLPA executive, was saying this week. “I know the Red Wings are really in favour of it. They would love it. I imagine there are a few other (teams that are interested).”

continued