Every weekday in August, Puck Daddy presents "5 Ways I'd Change the NHL," in which a cross-section of sports media and hockey personalities offer solutions, suggestions and absurdities to remake the League to their liking. We're thrilled to have noted hockey neophyte Will Leitch, New York Magazine contributing editor and Deadspin Editor Emeritus, contributing his list today ...

By Will Leitch

1. Hockey players should no longer be allowed to wear helmets. As all casual observers of the sport know, hockey players are impervious to pain. But their faces are still able to be damaged; teeth destroyed, eyes knocked out of their socket, noses flattened. And yet they will keep coming. This will help us train our master class of human to take on the Terminators during the upcoming cyborg apocalypse.

2. Playoff beards should commence growing on the first day of the season and should not be shaved until a team is eliminated from the playoffs (or playoff contention). This will be especially dazzling in High Definition.

3. The same goes for mullets. Especially so.

4. Considering the success of the New Years Day game in Buffalo, all games should be played outdoors. If you can't figure out a way to make that work, Phoenix, well, why do you have a team anyway?

5. All players should be secretly required to use steroids. Baseball's steroid age brought countless headlines and, ultimately, unprecedented popularity and profitability. This sport needs a better class of criminal.

Will Leitch is the founder and a writer-at-large for Deadspin.com, where we proudly authored the NHL Closer for a few months. Leitch photo courtesy of twoeightnine design. On Wednesday at noon: Craig Custance, National Hockey Writer for The Sporting News.

Related: Gary Bettman, Commissioner for Life