No, I'm not talking about the "plan" to expand the NCAA basketball tournament to 96 teams that was really just a ploy to make everyone give the NCAA a pat on the back for "only" expanding the tourney to 68 teams...
The NCAA rules committee made some changes this month in regards to the rules of college hockey. I think most of the major changes were ill-advised, but the most egregious change has already been retracted by the committee.
The icing rule that was adopted, then rescinded:
Icing would be enforced for the entire game – even for teams on the penalty kill.
n This would have been a radical change to the game. I understand that the rules committee wanted to figure out a way to get more goals into college hockey, but this was the wrong way to go about it. Allowing shorthanded teams to clear the puck not only allows them to get fresh skaters onto the ice (critically important when killing a penalty), but also incentivizes careful puck play by the team with the man advantage. If teams on the power play did not need to worry about puck clearances, they could be much more liberal in the chances that they would take, and I believe the overall quality of the play would suffer. I would much rather see skilled passing on the power play resulting in good scoring opportunities than teams driving the puck at the net at every chance they could get. Far more faceoffs and slower play would be the result of this rule change, and I’m glad it’s only a hypothetical.
Rule changes:
1) A “contact to the head” penalty now carries a minimum of a five minute major and either a game misconduct or a game disqualification.
n If referees decide to call CTH penalties with the same frequency that they have in previous years, this is a horrible idea. For each CTH call, a player would be removed from the game, regardless of intent. Remember, college hockey officials are told to have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to CTH, meaning that we have seen a slew of two minute minors handed out to players when contact was minimal, and incidental. If the rules committee chooses to have such a policy, the repercussions for CTH should not be as severe as they will be next year. For blatant head shots, game misconduct penalties should certainly be assessed. However, if the same zero-tolerance standard is to be applied for contact to the head, the new rules that mandate five minutes and a game misconduct amount to mandatory jail sentences for all automobile violations, whether it’s a case of a parking ticket or vehicular homicide.
n I tried to look up the number of CTH penalties that were called in ten random games in 2009-10 for Miami, but USCHO’s box scores did not list a penalty summary. I would guess that there is at least one called every game, and most times it’s more like two or three. Maybe Mike could look this up. I’m interested, but I am also very sleepy.
2) Icing has been modified. If it appears to the linesman that a player of the team that has iced the puck would reach the puck before a player from the non-offending team, icing is waved off.
n Seems pretty subjective to me, but I’d rather have a hybrid system between the NHL’s system of strict touch up icing and no touch icing than strictly the latter. Since the tie goes to the defender, though, and the whistle will be blown as the players cross through the faceoff circle, I expect that the best races will be blown dead anyways, and treated as if the rule was no touch icing.
3) Another icing change – previously, if the linesman ruled that an iced puck could have been received as a pass by a player on the offending team, icing was waved off. This is no longer the case.
n Again, not a major change. I doubt I’d have much of an opinion on this at all if not for the style of hockey that Miami tends to play. They are less willing than many of their opponents to stretch the ice with long passes through the neutral zone that could turn into iced pucks. Since this rule change discourages long passes through neutral ice, and rewards teams (like Miami) that can pass more crisply, I’m all for it. In the long run it encourages fundamentally sound hockey at the cost of some excitement on the breakaway.
4) The teams will now switch ends as they do in pro overtime. No effort was made to rein in the CCHA’s shootout system, but a lack of an endorsement of this system by the NCAA has fueled speculation that the CCHA will revert to the old overtime system and get rid of the shootout.
n It’s a topic for another day, but I think the shootout has been a failure in the CCHA, partially because I’m fine with ties in hockey, but mostly because it made it far too confusing to compare CCHA records to the other teams in college hockey. By the middle of last year we were expressing CCHA records as (W-L-T) anyways, and the national media never reported CCHA records with the shootout records intact. Bottom line is that all of college hockey should be on one system for how records are decided. We use the pairwise system to compare records and decide who goes where in the tournament (if the pairwise lets them go at all). If we’re going to use such a system, we had better express records the same way throughout the NCAA.
5) If a goal is scored on a delayed penalty, even with the extra attacker, the wronged team is still rewarded with a power play.
n I think this one is crazy, but it could have been a lot worse if the penalized team was no longer allowed to ice the puck. This change won’t affect too many games, but forcing a team to kill a penalty after giving up a goal with the extra attacker on the ice seems too harsh for my tastes. The whole point of the extra attacker coming on to the ice is that it extends the power play. The team with the extra attacker has more chances to score, and if they can control the puck well during the 6 on 5, the other team is worn down from trying to touch up the puck. Don’t penalize a team doubly for taking a minor penalty. Remember, there are some good times to take a penalty, so taking a good one shouldn’t cost your team two goals.
The elephant in the room:
The committee decided to look into the idea of allowing players to wear half face shields – the visors that most NHL players wear. These would protect the eyes while allowing for far better vision than the bars that college hockey players currently sport. More trips to the dentist’s office for the players, but they would be able to better anticipate hits coming from outside of their current field of vision, and hopefully avoid more serious injuries, such as concussions. Some coaches, most notably Jack Parker of BU, have also suggested that the face masks give the players a sense of invincibility that causes them to level some of the blows to the head that the NCAA is trying to crack down on with the CTH rule. Maybe by allowing the face shields the NCAA could decrease head injuries through a better field of vision for the players and more cautious play when it comes to hitting high – sans the draconian penalties that will be in place for next season in the cases of contact to the head.
No comments:
Post a Comment