NHL opts for quick fix. (Remote Patrol).

We weren't willing to give three hours out of our busy schedules to the NHL, and neither was Disney when it got a basketball jones (read: NBA contract). This season's 71 NHL exposures on ESPN/ESPN2 are 45 percent fewer than two years ago; ABC has only five games scheduled.

But if the games were running closer to 2 1/2 hours, would you shoot the puck?

Due largely to new no-loitering face-off rules, 15 minutes have been painlessly shaved--meaning it takes less time to watch NHL start-to-finish than NFL, MLB, NASCAR and even the NBA on occasion, and it's less painful to televise. Fox Sports Net affiliates that were allotting three hours to hometown teams now are scheduling windows that are 30 minutes smaller, and Kiefer Sutherland and ESPN are enthusiastically promoting this week's return of Hockey Night in America (now on Thursdays). "I don't know anybody who doesn't like the change," says ESPN analyst Bill Clement.

Rule changes--rammed through last summer by marketing-savant commissioner Gary Bettman and NHL COO Jon Litner, former head of programming at ABC--were patterned after the sport's Olympic version, which received critical acclaim for "flow." Targeted were faceoffs, notorious for dead air: Now the visiting team has five seconds to get its selected players ...