if a 4th defensive pairing was implemented

The NHL already has a watered down pool of talent because of expansions. Don't think adding a 4th d-pair does anything to lessen that burden.

Allocating ice time for another pair isn’t worth the headache it would be on coach’s. Can have 4 pairings worth of players on roster and take advantage of competition.

If this were to happen, the NHL would be forced to raise the cap ceiling faster than they planned. If they don’t do that, teams would be forced to get rid of other contracts/players, making teams like Arizona, Buffalo, Ottawa, and Seattle better teams as they have the cap space to take on these players. Teams like Vegas, Toronto, and Tampa wouldn’t be able to ice a full roster without a cap raise. So either which way, it’s a no win situation, unless you are a team with all the cap space. The NHL and Bettman especially won’t do that, so we wouldn’t have to worry about this situation anyway, at least as long as Bettman is the commissioner.

Many teams already carry 8 D on their roster at any given time of year.



IMO this would reduce the risk of injury to the players, also instead of having forward lines playing with different partners at different points in the games you would have entire lines playing together and forming chemistry much like a pp unit. Still don't think it would happen but it would be a coaches dream to have entire lines and not have to worry about mish mashing players all the time.

They do carry 8 defensemen, and that's why I stick by it. The top 4 on all teams play about 3/4 to 5/6 of every game as is. Nowadays, there's very little difference between the number 5 guy and number 8 or 9 guy.