NHL gets rid of high-tech pucks
The National Hockey League confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that they would be reverting back to the old pucks they used from the 2019-20 season, ridding themselves of the new high-tech pucks. The announcement may not seem like a big deal to most, but several players have already declared their excitement about getting to use the old pucks again.
Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs was one such player, joking with media that the new pucks were a big reason he failed to convert on several chances in Toronto’s opening games of the season.
“Actually, [teammate Jason] Spezza was the first one to bring it up to me, and I told him that’s why I couldn’t capitalize on some of these chances I’ve had in the first four games — because these pucks are all messed up,” said Matthews, via Sportsnet.
Last season, Matthews was in the thick of the race for the Maurice “Rocket” Richard trophy awarded to the player who scores the most goals during the regular season. However, the league was forced to halt play in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Matthews had an incredible 47 goals in 70 games and he is hoping that a change in the pucks will help him regain his stellar form.
Matthews explained to the media that teammate Jason Spezza and he had conducted an experiment on the new pucks to spot the differences.
“We held one of the regular pucks and one of the new ones, and there was a little bit of a difference in the weight and stuff, but it seemed like sometimes it wasn’t sliding as well as it usually would,” Matthews said.
“Don’t know if that was the ice or pucks. We were pumped we were going back to the regular ones.”
The league explained the decision to revert back to the old pucks in a statement on Tuesday.
“The first supply of 2020-21 pucks did not receive the same precise finishing treatments during the off-season manufacturing process as were used during the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs,”
The league first began using the new pucks inside the NHL bubbles in Edmonton and Toronto this summer during the 2020 playoffs. Many players had expressed their concerns with switching pucks at such a crucial time in the season, but they didn’t seem to have too much of an impact on the product put on the ice.
The league is not giving up on the high-tech pucks altogether though as they are hoping to have a new chip-equipped pucks available sooner than later.
Matthews and the Maple Leafs will get their first opportunity to play this season with the old pucks on Wednesday night when they host Canadian rivals the Edmonton Oilers. The contest features two of the league’s brightest young stars in Matthews and Connor McDavid and it will be interesting to see whether the old pucks make any difference in the way the game is actually played. If nothing else though, it seems to already have given some players a mental boost.
