While teams took risks and bombed around trying to win games 7-6, he noticed that when they devoted all their energy to shutting down their opponent's scoring chances, their own offensive opportunities didn't dwindle. In fact, they seemed to have the puck a lot more. How nice.

The Trap allowed teams to save energy too, by simply being in the right places on the ice to make your opponent's offensive life as difficult as possible.  By making it nearly impossible to get into their zone, and even though they weren't taking chances of their own, they were able to create just enough goals to win some low-scoring affairs. Barring the occasional breakdown, they had it figured out.

The problem for the NHL began when everybody figured it out. Much like every team in the NFL this year is incorporating some version of the Miami Dolphins' "Wildcat" offense (because it was proving effective), NHL teams followed Jacques Lemaire and the New Jersey Devils down the path to "defensive domination" or, as fans call it, "hell."

And that was the stick in the NHL's spokes.

Ho-to-the-ly, did the NHL suck to watch for a few years there.

I've made that point clear right?

Big, big men were standing around, grabbing on to anyone with speed who had the audacity to try to go around instead of through players. And I started following other sports.

But I still loved to play the game. I was coming up through the ranks of junior hockey, and headed to play in college, a style of hockey played on an ocean-sized ice rink, where clutch and grab is the equivalent of skate and pass: You do it or you get burned. About halfway through my time in college, the NHL decided it had seen enough, and made a few, simple, pro-talent tweaks.

Sometimes you need to take one step back to take two steps forward, and the NHL did that during the 2002-03 season. The crackdown was issued on all things obstruction, anything clutch and grab, anything tug and hold. As penalties spiked, and games grinded to a near special-teams-related halt, it became evident that this time, the refs weren't going to budge. So the players had to.

Hello Maxim Afinogenov, goodbye Eric Lindros.

Of the past decade in hockey, nothing has done more to revitalize the game, and breathe new life into a sport that was teetering on the brink of obscurity. And it didn't make a huge difference, just enough of one to get people to take notice again. At the very least, the "re-branding" that went along with this change made it feel like the NHL had a fresh start, which it badly needed.

That said, if the goals-per-game stat hadn't gone up in the past four or five years, I'm not so sure the game would have any hope of still being considered one of the United States' four "major" sports.

There have always been small-player-anomalies in the league, but when the rules allowed you to simply grab onto a little guy and stop his progress, they were about half as valuable as someone strong enough to skate through the obstruction. Now, their value is fully realized, because they're faster than a lot of the "big, strong" guys that aren't allowed to grab them anymore.

The game started shifting to a more European style of play around the middle of this past decade. As much as Canadians and Americans may not love to hear that, it's the truth. The common misconception is that North American players aren't as good in that style of game, but that's not the case.

It's just that, when we were growing up, our coaches did their best to tailor our games to be effective at a professional level. There's no bones about it growing up in Canada — the NHL is the goal, and here are the tools you'll need to succeed there.

When the rules changed, and allowed for a more free-flowing, creative style of NHL, we weren't nearly as suited for that as the Europeans, just based on the skills they molded as kids. European players, who handle the puck more often than a pizza place handles pies, were in the fortunate position of not having to change their style, and being able to step right in.

As the game continues along the path of talent over-toughness, finesse over physicality, the tools we're now giving our own youth players are more suited to what works now, and for where the game is heading. Coaches are less likely to be anti-dangling, pro-dump in, because they've seen how skilled players can be effective on the big stage.

The NHL needs to stay on top of what makes the game so appealing to watch. We haven't lost the hard hits or occasional fights by making the game faster, so if the game is to shift away from what people enjoy, the NHL and its officials need to clamp back down to focus on what makes the game great: Its athleticism.

Trapping was killing the need to be athletic, to be mobile, to be quick. Now you can't survive without those skills. This tweak in the rules was easily the most important thing to happen to the NHL the past decade.

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