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[DropThePuck]

"That's chaos," Hitchcock said. "You're standing there and there's a loose puck in front of the net, what you did before was just knock down people. Now you're swiping at the puck and it's either going into the corner or in your net."

This is not a welcome change to a dominant, physical defenseman such as Derian Hatcher.

"To me they took a lot of battling out of the game," he said. "It seems to be a little bit of a softer game, to be honest. With these rules they've taken a lot of emotion out of the game."

<PhillyBurbs.com 10-09-2005 link>

[DropThePuck]

It's safe to assume that retired winger Dave "Tiger" Williams, the most penalized player in league history (4,421 minutes), would hate playing in the new NHL with its tighter officiating. He probably would collect at least a few fines, too, for criticizing it.

"They've taken everything out of the game," Williams, who played for five teams including the Maple Leafs, recently told the Toronto Sun. "Guy Lafleur would grind out his 50 goals every year and so did [Lanny] McDonald, [Bryan] Trottier, the Rocket, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. Now you don't have to get a broken nail on your finger and you're going to score 40 or 50 goals."

Williams was disenchanted with the officiating at a recent Oilers-Flames game.

"Was that exciting to watch, five power plays in a row from the same team?" he asked. "I'd rather watch pee-wee hockey, and that's not a knock against pee-wees."

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