If 92-year-old Howie Meeker would only fire up his old steam-driven Telestrator, surely he could connect the dots with ease.

And caught in the middle of what he would draw would be the likes of P.K. Subban and Taylor Hall, two high-risk players whose teams, the Montreal Canadiens and Edmonton Oilers, have just decided they aren't worth the risk.

Howie would require but three short lines to explain what happened: one connecting Rogers to the coach, one connecting the coach to star players, and one bringing it all back home to Rogers.

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Golly gee, it's really that simple.

Much has been made this past week or so about vast changes at Hockey Night In Canada, out with George Stroumboulopoulos, in with Ron MacLean. Old lamps for new lamps.

While there has been much to criticize in HNIC – the panelists playing ministicks far and away the most foolish – the plummeting viewership is not something to be blamed entirely on tight suits. Or, for that matter, adding in the unfortunate happenstance of no Canadian team in this year's postseason.

Those who argue this are missing the point, and the point is that if Rogers is going to pay $5.2-billion over 12 years to the National Hockey League, there should surely be a clause in the agreement that requires the league to deliver good product.

Many commentators claimed that by chasing a younger audience, Rogers offended the "hard-core" fan base. Actually, both are offended. The game, as it is played these days, is more often unwatchable than enjoyable. There may be no available statistic for those "hard-core" fans – including those who played the NHL game and covered the NHL – who have tuned out, but they are legion.

Why? Because it's boring.

And this brings us to coaching. There is no job in hockey – including that of between-the-benches colour commentator – more fragile than that of coaching.

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The threat of being first to go when matters turn sour has a profound effect on coaches. They will choose safe to daring every time.

Caution hockey will not likely win you a Stanley Cup, but it can get you into the playoffs, which tends to be the benchmark at which a coach keeps or loses his place at the bench.

How ironic, then, that this week also saw the election of Pat Quinn to the Hockey Hall of Fame. As Quinn so often loved to say, "It's a great game, but coaches find a way to stop it."

NHL overcoaching – three on the bench, one upstairs, one breaking down video – has turned hockey on its ear. Once a game played by driving forward toward the opposition net, it is now a game where most attack comes from behind that net.

The obsession with shot-blocking has created a new game where goalies, once usually the smallest and quickest players on the team, are now sought for their size, the theory being that should a puck ricochet through the bodies it will bounce off the giant wearing the oversize equipment.

Howie Meeker thinks, as does Bob Gainey, that going down to block a shot should be a penalty. We completely agree.

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By sticking endlessly to "systems," coaches lose trust in players who freelance, who take it upon themselves to change the game, who try things that don't always work.

Today's coaches say they want only "200-foot players," suggesting that yesterday's players, Wayne Gretzky and Guy Lafleur, for example, would be stapled to the bench until they learned how to play "the right way."

Perhaps if Subban and Hall had been playing a generation back, they would have been treasured by more than the little kids who adore them and dream of playing exactly as these two young daring Canadians prefer to play.

But no, Subban, whose Canadiens missed the playoffs, is off to Nashville in favour of Shea Weber, a far-more conservative defenceman who is, unfortunately, four years older, slower, but expected to be dependable and stick to the coach's system. Hall, whose Oilers also missed the playoffs, is off to New Jersey in exchange for Adam Larsson, who is said to be solid defensively but offers none of the thrilling, damn-the-torpedoes rushes for which Hall is renowned.

"Give the game back to the players," Herb Brooks used to say. The man who coached the U.S. men's hockey team to the "Miracle on Ice" victory in the 1980 Olympics came to deplore how overcoaching had sucked the entertainment out of the game.

Herb Brooks died in 2003. Pat Quinn passed away in 2014. Hard as we try to listen, there is no coach saying such things these days.

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Perhaps, however, if coaching backed off – or was forced to back off – and if the game really could be given back to the likes of Subban and Hall, then the fans might come back as well.

But don't count on it happening soon.