Icing

For those who don’t know anything about hockey, icing is when a player sends the puck down the ice from behind the center line and the puck is touched by the opposing team after it crosses the goal line (obviously not inside of the net).

When the league came out of its lockout, they changed how icing was handled. The rule was called the same way, but they decided to increase the punishment. Teams guilty of icing the puck could no longer change lines before the faceoff. The idea was to deter icing.

There is no question that the change has increased scoring. For those of us who care more about what goes on on the ice rather than on paper, the inability to change lines is detrimental to the game. There’s a difference between increasing offense and decreasing defense. Since this is about forcing a team to play with a tired line, the league’s approach is clearly crippling the defense. Instead of watching two teams with fresh players, we get to watch one team playing fresh against a team that has been worn down. This is so much more exciting, don’t you think? My sarcasm detector just blew up.

Since the league claimed that the change was more about reducing the icing calls rather than increasing scoring, perhaps I should look at this issue a little differently. Is the game flowing more with fewer whistles thanks to the change? I don’t have any numbers, but it doesn’t feel that way.

I have seen teams avoid the puck more than ever before just to get the icing calls. While linesmen are supposed to waive off icing in those cases, they rarely do. Same thing for the lazy glide. Some players refuse to skate after the puck just to make sure that it crosses the goal line. Again, linesmen fail to to their job of waiving off the icing calls in these situations.

Here’s another problem. After one icing, another is no longer a big deal because of the extra rest that players can receive. Isn’t it interesting that a deterrent for icing has developed a new scenario to justify a team icing the puck?

Guilty parties have developed all sorts of tricks to help them out when they ice the puck. For starters, they don’t usually try very hard to race for the puck. Instead, they just wait in their own zone for the other team to touch it. This way, they can conserve their energy. Sometimes, you will see a line change anyway just so the officials have to take time to sort out who is supposed to be on the ice. Some people find pieces of broken equipment that wouldn’t normally be found before the faceoff. Some teams even intentionally get players thrown out of the faceoff just to buy time. As a result, icing calls can be more disruptive to the flow of a game than ever before.

The NHL needs to go back to allowing line changes on icing calls. The new rules do nothing for the flow of the game, and they cripple a team’s ability to play hard. This is clearly harming the entertainment value, and I always thought that one of the primary purposes for sports was to entertain.