Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports
The NHL Competition Committee met Sunday evening in Nashville for their annual Stanley Cup Finals meeting. This was Barry Trotz’ first participation in committee proceedings since being appointed last week. As a result of the meeting, the committee is recommending two minor changes to the rules.
Co-chairs of the NHL/NHLPA Competition Committee – Mathieu Schneider, National Hockey League Players’ Association (NHLPA) Special Assistant to the Executive Director, and Colin Campbell, National Hockey League (NHL) Senior Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations, issued the following statement on new rules recommendations after the Competition Committee met yesterday in Nashville:
Rule 87 Time-outs: The Committee recommends a change so that no time-out shall be granted following an icing for the team that committed the icing infraction.
Rule 80.4: The Committee recommends a change so that when a team has a power-play and a player on the team at full strength causes a stoppage of play as the result of striking the puck with a high stick in the offensive zone, the resulting face-off shall be made in the neutral zone on the nearest face-off spot. This makes the rule consistent with the how the face-off is addressed when there is a stoppage under the same circumstances when both teams are at full strength.
Clearly, the Committee has identified the only remaining flaws in this otherwise perfect game: timeouts after icings and some kind of faceoff thingy on special teams.
Slashing, boarding and obstruction? Nah. Offside rules that are myopic and counterproductive? Nope. Fundamental changes to shot blocking? Nah.
But the timeouts after icings, which coaches will now get around by having the goalie’s mask strap come off or some other sneaky nonsense? Got’er!
The new rules recommendations still require approval by the NHLPA’s Executive Board and the NHL’s Board of Governors, at which point the language of the rules will be formalized.
Jon Sorensen
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