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NHL 2019-20 Rule Changes: Short-Sighted and Reactive

September 25, 2019, 9:52 AM ET [15 Comments]
Paul Stewart
Blogger •Former NHL Referee • RSSArchiveCONTACT
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A few weeks ago, well after the early afternoon NFL football games were over and during a commercial break in the second quarter of one of the late-afternoon games, I did some quick channel surfing and happened upon a baseball game between New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies. The game was in the bottom of the ninth inning.

"Hmmm, it's awfully late. Guess they had a rain delay or a late start in New York," I muttered aloud.

The broadcasters answered my question for me. No rain delays during the afternoon, and a normal start time for first pitch. Between a combined 16 pitchers being used by the two teams, mound visits, batters stepping out of the box, discussions over checked swings, and all sorts of other delays, the game went four hours and 29 minutes between the first pitch and the final out. It set a new record for the New York Mets for the longest nine-inning game in team history. A dubious record, for sure.

I love all sports. Baseball and football are almost as much a part of my family's story as hockey. In addition to hockey, I played baseball and football up through my years at Groton. My grandfather, in addition to being a Stanley Cup winning NHL coach and longtime referee, was the dean of National League umpires, worked four World Series and four All-Star Games, coached in the minor leagues, scouted for two Major League teams, and was himself a pro pitcher until he joined the military in World War I. My father coached high school football and officiated games in several different sports.

Despite my love of baseball, I can't even fathom the idea of anyone sitting through a four-and-a-half hour nine inning game.

I had a flashback to my early hockey refereeing days, working my way up through the AHL before I moved up to the NHL. When we had games in Springfield, owner Eddie Shore and then his successor, Peter Cooney, used to deliberately try to lengthen intermission to drum up a little extra business in the concession stands. I'd tap my watch and say, "Can we start now?"

One of the things I always loved about hockey is the flow of play. Is there anything better than a lengthy stretch with back-and-forth action and no whistles? When there was a stoppage, get those line changes out, drop the puck and let's go again. Emotion builds, the crowd roars or groans after a goal is scored. Quick celebration by the team that scores. Skate to center ice, drop the puck.

In the NHL's replay age, we've lost a lot of that. As replay expanded and expanded some more, and then coaches challenges were introduced, these have been the effects: 1) game delays have gotten more frequent and lengthier, 2) officials have increasing adopted a "we'll fix it in replay if we have to" mentality as they come up through the ranks, rather than sharpening their split-second judgment, 3) many times, the right ruling is STILL not made in the end whether in Toronto or off the on-ice iPad like devices, and 4) the already convoluted and poorly written NHL Rule Book expands with even more convoluted content.

Way too often, rule changes are reactive to one particular play or incident from the past season. We ask "why should we change this rule?" (the pros) but too often fail to ask "why shouldn't we change this rule?" (the cons) to thoroughly consider what the effects might be.

I am not anti-replay by any means. But I don't think our sport considers each addition to reviewable calls very wisely. The latest additions are only going to drag out games longer, create new loopholes to the Rule Book, result in more play rulings that go against the spirit of the rule and, yet, the occasional egregious miss will still happen.

Remember the zero-tolerance "toe in the crease" monstrosity of the mid-to-late 1990s. Perfectly legitimate goals were wiped out by the dozens. Replay delays galore, to the point in which everyone was subdued after a goal was scored with an attacker in the vicinity of the crease. However, a Stanley Cup-deciding OT goal was allowed to stand despite Brett Hull being in the crease.

The NHL is steadily working itself toward the direction of all the added and painfully lengthy delays we see in other sports; does this actually benefit the game? And what are the side effects of some of these new rules?

Now, let's get into the new rules themselves.

1. With the exception of fighting, video review will be used on every major penalty. Officials can reduce the call to two minutes if they see fit, but can't rescind the penalty altogether. This will apply to everything from boarding to elbowing, charging, etc. Additionally, on four-minute high-sticking calls, the officials can themselves opt to review the play by video to see if a two-minute minor would be more appropriate (presumably to get rid of the "automatic four" for any amount of blood that has become the standard). In all cases, no penalty can be increased from the original call.

Yikes, what a mess!!!! Does anyone see ANY potential problems with this? Did anyone who has ever officiated at any level have a voice in the creation of these new instructions?

It doesn't take a lot of foresight to predict that we're going to cause added delays (some of which will be interminable, such as watching over and over whether a player guilty of boarding saw the numbers or the guy he boarded turned at the last moment). It will create more confusion. What it will NOT do is get rid of controversial rulings, and it will NOT help get significantly more calls correct. And on the obvious majors that don't need a replay to determine the on-ice call, why waste the time in the first place?

What about the flip side? Let's suppose that a player is cut by an accidental high stick by a teammate but an opposing player gets penalized. Are we really going to have a replay delay to not correct a wrong call but simply to reduce the penalty so it is a little "less wrong"? Will you still disrespect me in the morning? Of course!

What this rule really is: An attempt to appease Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley over the penalty call on Cody Eakin in the playoffs this past spring. Guess what, though: the root cause of the problem was the discrepancy between how the rule is written by the letter of the law and a common sense application of it.

Don't like it? Then change the wording of the damn rule. Don't add more replay delays to "fix" it.

2. Coaches' challenge has been expanded. Challenges can now be instituted not just for goalie interference and off-side but for any situation where a "good hockey goal" is in dispute; such as the puck-in-the netting and hand-pass goals in the playoffs from last year's playoffs.


No one wants to see repeats of the 1980 Cup Final (the missed off-side play in the first period of what turned out to be an OT game in Game 6), or the goal-through-the-side-of-the-net play in 2000 (full disclosure: I refereed that game), or the aforementioned plays from last playoffs.

Guess what, though: There was ALREADY a mechanism in the Rule Book added a few years ago for such situations. It just rarely, if ever, got used.

There was already a broad allowance specified in Rule 38.4 (ix): (ix) The video review process shall be permitted to assist the Referees in determining the legitimacy of all potential goals (e.g. to ensure they are “good hockey goals”).

I am totally fine with this, because we should WANT to eliminate illegitimate goals that were missed on the ice and we WANT legit ones to count. The problem is that there may have been a mechanism in place, but there wasn't a standard practice to USE it as needed.

There were three viable options, as I see it. 1) Review all goals in Toronto (just as all NFL touchdowns are reviewed) to ensure it was a good hockey goal. A goal directly off a hand pass is not a good hockey goal any more than one played with a high stick. 2) Limit the automatic "good hockey goal" review to overtime goals, since those are game-ending plays; or 3) Live with the human element.

I was fine with any of these options, but I suspected it won't be the third option unless there was a time-limit element added to go with the call on the ice after a certain elapsed time for review.

One thing I was NOT in favor of was the choice that was predictably chosen: expanding the purview of the coaches' challenge. It should not be up to the coaches on the two benches to generate a review. The crew in Toronto can implement the review. Blatantly apparent offside plays that are missed in real time should be reviewed but not the slide-rule type of plays. The rule of thumb is whether an actual advantage was gained by the actions of the attacking team that scored.

Specific to last season's hand-pass play, I have seen a lot of bad information out there. First of all, it does not matter if the puck glanced off a defending player. Only when there is a chance of possession and control of the puck does it negate a hand pass. Plain and simple, play should have been blown dead, and the goal shouldn't have counted. That is where it would be totally justified -- and needed -- for the folks in Toronto to inform the on-ice officials that this one needed to be reviewed.

Secondly, this is directed to certain folks in the professional hockey media. Please learn that there are not "four refs" on the ice. There are two referees and two linesmen and they have different sets of responsibilities and instructions. Hand passes typically fall within the linesmen's purview to whistle down the play. Refs aren't instructed to look for it.

3. The consequences for an unsuccessful challenge have changed somewhat. Rather than a delay of game penalty for a lost offside challenge and a lost timeout for a goalie interference challenge, all unsuccessful challenges carry a penalty. It's a two-minute minor for the first one and four-minute penalties for all subsequent ones. Within these parameters, coaches can challenge as many times as they like, because it is no longer necessary to still have the team's lone permitted timeout in the back pocket.

If we're going to keep coaches' challenge, I am fine with this change. It was a bit silly to have different consequences for different types of challenges, and a gambled timeout was a bad standard to begin with.

However, we've created new loose ends that were carelessly left untied. For example: What if it involves, let's say, a go-ahead goal in the final two minutes and there's already been an earlier unsuccessful challenge? The four-minute penalty could be utterly meaningless in such a situation.

I'll let you in on a little secret about writing or editing a Rule Book -- and I know, because I've done that task. When you add or change something, all of the consequences and situations need to spelled out in writing. Let's suppose that the team that unsuccessfully challenged, pulls their goalie to even up the manpower and reties the game to force OT. Does this reinstitute the four-minute penalty, and the team now starts OT with the penalty carried over?

That's PROBABLY what it will be, but you'd better put that it writing to spell out that this is the standard.

4. New housekeeping rules: Defending teams already could not make a line change after an icing. Now that's been expanded to no line changes if a goalie freezes the puck on a long shot or dump-in from beyond the red line or when an defending player accidentally pushes the net off its moorings.

Once again, we've got good intentions and half-baked execution on the rule-making end. What happened to the penalty shot in the last two minutes if there's an accidental dislodging of the net? Does that still exist? Larry Robinson once vowed to never speak to me again after I called a penalty shot under that rule, and so far he's kept that vow (j/k).

I'll tell you what's going to happen: in taking more judgment away, we're going to have two consequences.

* It's an easy cop-out to revert to a "face-off left/right circle" as the consequence and simply avoid the judgment call on deliberate-accidental push. We pay officials to judge, so let them judge. Instead, we're going to mindlessly follow the yellow brick road... faceoff, faceoff, faceoff. That looked kind of intentional, that push. Nah, just a faceoff. It's easier.

* When a goalie freezes a puck on a long dump-in, one of the common reasons is that there was already a line change underway and the goalie sees a forechecker oncoming. So now do we go back to the moment the whistle was blown and see which players on the defending side had already exited/entered? Do we revert to the players who were out beforehand? Have we now opened the floor to debate if the red line was gained (ala the dispute over a borderline icing)?

5. Speaking of left/right circle, another new rule permits the offensive team to choose left or right circle in the attack zone for every scenario in which the defensive team is not allowed to change players.

Strategically, I understand this. But as someone who also cares about skill development in players, I don't like it.

We're encouraging more and more strong-side specialization rather than all-around skill. The game's truly dominant faceoff men over the years -- Dave Keon (who once told me that he was strategic about which faceoffs he cared about winning), Mark Messier, Joel Otto, Bobby Clarke and others -- won drawns with equal skill on either side.

I'll tell you a quick story: Back when I was a student athlete at the University of Pennsylvania and worked at the Class of 1923 rink where the Philadelphia Flyers practiced and our team played, Flyers center Rick MacLeish often asked me to come out with him to the faceoff circles. I'd bring out a bucket of pucks. Ricky would instruct me to drop the puck -- 6 o'clock, 3 0'clock, etc. -- and he'd practice how he'd win the draws. His wrists were so strong, and his hand-eye coordination so strong that he could bat puck after puck out of the air and send it exactly where he wanted to. He was equally good on his natural (left circle) side or the right.

That was 45 years ago. Years later, as a ref, I could always tell how my old Cincinnati Stingers teammate, Messier, was going to win the draw by subtle changes in his posture or grip, and he was uncanny in winning them.

In today's game, we've got so much more left side/ right side specialization that even some of the game's top faceoff man primarily take draws on their strong side and someone else takes what would be their off-side draws. Are we serving the game's craft this way? Or are we diluting it to the point where left/right side draws really ARE that much of an advantage if you have a good faceoff man rather than a negligible one because he can win regularly on either side?

Hockey is far too fast to change or add rules without thinking everything through clearly. It happens annually, especially in the NHL, and the game itself doesn't really benefit from it. In the meantime, bring a pillow and a blanket to doze through all the extra delays we're adding. Lastly, here's a piece of advice for arena management: start charging for parking by the hour rather than a flat rate. You'll increase revenues.

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A 2018 inductee into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born citizen to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the first American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games.

Visit Paul's official websites, YaWannaGo.com and Officiating by Stewart.
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