Good news is there are cures to what ails hockey

Page 3 of 3 -- Some keys to consider:

Fighting -- It's hard not to come across tongue-in-cheek here, but let's be honest, real fighting, up to and including the donnybrooks, personified the game's passion. Sure, it sometimes got out of hand. But it also put real juice in the building on a nightly basis, and it did a masterful job of keeping most everyone honest. The punk who tried to get away with shifts of hook and hold ultimately had to answer to a right hand to the kisser. Bettman and others cleaned it up, because fighting made for a tough sell when the game tried to court a national TV market. Oh, those brutes. Not politically correct. Too crude for television. Well, the national TV thing never developed. Hockey's TV ratings have been just south of abysmal. And here in 2005, nothing is too crude for TV. If North America goes bonkers for shows that have people licking tarantulas and covering their bodies with snakes and giant cockroaches, could it tolerate a modern-day version of a Terry O'Reilly-Clark Gillies mid-ice brawl? Oh, man, could it.

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Remedy: Time to get rid of the instigator rule, and amend, even repeal, the 10-game suspension for those who leave the bench to enter an altercation. True, it's not hockey. But those spectacular NASCAR crashes also don't fit the exact parameters of racing, either. Sporting America was even OK with Pedro Martinez cow-tipping an elderly Don Zimmer. That told everyone the gloves are off.

Goalie equipment -- To their credit, NHL officials wanted to make headway on this last spring, and recommended that 2 inches be trimmed off the width of leg pads. The Just-Say-No Players Association did what it does best and filed a grievance. Dust off a picture of Reggie Lemelin, circa 1988, and compare it to the likes of Martin Brodeur or, even better, the 60-foot cabin named Roberto "Winnebago" Luongo. Are these guys outfitted in the latest gear, or did they simply get stapled to a mattress at the Jordan's Furniture sleep lab?

Remedy: All NHL goalies must enter an ESPN-sponsored Binion's strip poker tournament and gamble away 30 percent to 40 percent of their gear before they can return to the rink.

Interference -- They hooked and held in the 1970s and '80s, but dignity, honor, and the fear of getting ragdolled in a fight mitigated much of it. Bringing back the brute-force factor of fighting will clean up some of it. The referees should be able to police the rest.

Remedy: Better enforcement of existing rules, additional penalties for offenders -- perhaps including five-minute majors. It has to end.

Roster size -- If any dimensions have to change, it should begin here. Improved conditioning and the endless stream of TV timeouts make for players who, in many cases, head to the workout room after the game. Shouldn't these guys be tired after 60 minutes? Well, they're not.

Remedy: Reduce rosters from 18 skaters (routinely 12 forwards, 6 defensemen) to 14 or 15, max. Every coach would work with something like 9-10 forwards and 4-5 blue liners. By the end of the night, they'd be fittingly exhausted. Late in the game, tired players would lead to more scoring chances, similar to how fatigue typically leads to errors and scoring opportunities late in NFL games. Oh, and did I mention the payroll savings of trimming 3-4 roster players?

There are plenty of other rules and factors to nip and tuck. The guiding points to consider are passion, anticipation, rivalry, speed, and playing coverage.

In the end, it was too late to get the money right. As bad as that was, it won't be disastrous, because eventually the sides will figure how to divvy up more than $1 billion in payroll. So many dollars, so few men, so much hardship.

If they can't get the game right, then the money won't matter, because no one will pay to see it.