NHL Promises Fans Next Year’s Rinks Will Be Slipperier Than Ever

Speaking to reporters last Tuesday, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman laid out a list of sweeping changes which would be implemented at the start of the 2022 NHL regular season, chief among them being the league finally bending to overwhelming popular support and agreeing to make all 32 teams’ hockey rinks at least 70% slipperier.

“We have seen your tweets, read the overwhelming consensus on your message boards, and watched your protests outside our stadiums for years, and we are listening,” announced Bettman, standing behind a poster announcing an exclusive new partnership between the NHL and K-Y brand lubricant. “Our rink engineers have formulated a new, permanently wet ice which is sure to give fans all the oopsie-daisy pratfalls and accidental butt-sliding they’ve been clamoring for.”

Bettman also went over the various safety precautions the NHL was implementing to ensure that the ultra-frictionless ice would not inadvertently harm players, including fastening extremely sharp blades to the bottom of players’ skates and adding a wide range of slide-whistle sound effects to players’ falls so that they could laugh away their bruised egos and behinds.

Bettman also announced plans for playoff games featuring large foam mallets that will swing down on either side at random intervals, in addition to replacing the NHL Skills Competition with a free-for-all game of Last Man Standing. Although the 68-year-old commissioner maintained that the biggest thrill of all would come not from the hockey itself, but rather the game’s Zamboni machines, which are now expected to go careening into the stands at well over 200 miles per hour.