New Rules for the 2014-15 Season

Study up, boys!

With only 23 days til the open of hockey(!!!!), the officials with the National Hockey League have, as is often done, made provisions to the rulebook. This is done to keep up with the ever-changing sport, to give referees a reason to have pop quizzes, and to confuse (and sometimes upset) the common fan. But fear not, faithful BSB reader! I have done some research for you and I’ll zero in on what you need to know.

There were only ten changes made, some having to do with penalties, some having to do with ice space, and a couple about overtime. A spark notes version of the changes is as follows:

• Trapezoid expanded by two feet on each side of the net,
• Spin-o-rama has been deemed illegal in the penalty shot and shootout (I’m lookin at you, Dominic Moore),
• Expansion of the Game Misconduct (more below),
• Video will be expanded to include all scoring chances, including those when a ref will either blow or intend to blow the whistle after losing sight of the puck. Additionally, the “distinct kicking motion” will be extra reviewed. I have no idea what it means to “require more demonstrable video evidence,” but it is what it is,
• Tripping will be called when a player uses another body part to trip an opposing player, regardless of him touching the puck,
• Diving/embellishment and face-offs – see below
• Overtime will require a full-ice “dry scrape” (which sounds moderately uncomfortable), and coaches will not have to provide their first three shooters for the shootout,
• Face-off location will not penalize the team that placed the puck out of bounds if it was in an effort during a “bona fide scoring chance,”
• And this one I’m straight up copy and pasting from the NHL — The hash marks at the end zone circles will be moved from three feet apart to five feet, seven inches apart (international markings)

I breezed over two rules – diving/embellishment and delay of game on the face-off – because they’re the two that I find most fascinating and, quite frankly, awesome. The rules are listed below:

Don’t cheat now, ya hear?

Maybe NHL brass has really focused in on incidents where they see a certain player (or team, for that matter) has been using the power play and acting classes to their advantage. What I find most interesting about it is that a player will be not only penalized with game minutes, but also fined for diving and, if a player continues to do it, his coach will also be fined. One can only assume that higher-ups have noticed a pattern with one or more teams.

The delay of game face-off is also very interesting. This limits those times where an exhausted team that commits an icing and must then stay on the ice will intentionally get kicked out of the face-off circle. This may seem like nothing, but even a few extra seconds can give exhausted players a little extra oomph in their stride to get off the ice faster. If a team intentionally commits this infraction twice, the team will be assessed a two minute bench minor.

The last very noticeable change is the growth of the game misconduct. Those similar with soccer can compare it to receiving a yellow card or a red card. The following penalties will now join boarding and hitting from behind, with two of these infractions in one game resulting in an automatic one game suspension: clipping, charging, elbowing, interference, kneeing, head-butting and butt-ending. Two things: 1) it’s sad that I can think of two situations of kneeing and elbowing off the top of my head, and 2) I sincerely hope “butt-ending” isn’t a synonym for hip checks, cause you all know how much I love those. All jokes aside, this will hopefully end the “will he or won’t he” question surrounding suspensions related to questionable hits.

A full list of the changes can be found here.