The sport of hockey is a complicated one, and that’s especially true at its highest level, known otherwise as the National Hockey League. That’s probably why the league is now 106 years old and still can’t quite settle on a permanent set of rules.
Prior to every NHL campaign, the league’s board of governors, general managers, and the NHL/NHLPA joint Competition Committee meet to propose, debate, and perhaps institute new rules. And virtually every time they do that, the NHL does indeed wind up with at least a handful of new or altered rules for the upcoming season.
Sometimes, the changes are massive; sometimes, they’re mere housekeeping.
The 2024/25 campaign is no different.
The NHL announced their new rules for the 2024/25 season last week. We’re not going to sit here and pretend any of them are particular game-changers for the Vancouver Canucks and their ability to win hockey games this year. They’re not that.
But there are some rules in this bunch that might affect the Canucks-watching experience, and that’s worth talking about all the same.
Rule 38.2 (Situations Subject to Coach’s Challenge)
“A coach’s challenge now will be permitted to take down a penalty for puck out of play. This only will apply to delay of game penalties when the puck is determined to have deflected off a player, stick, glass or boards, and not on a judgment call on how the puck left the defensive zone (e.g., batted pucks or if the puck was shot out from the defensive zone). In the event of a failed challenge, another two-minute minor penalty will be assessed (in addition to the existing delay of game penalty).”
This is the big one, and for this author’s money…it stinks.
Based entirely on anecdotal evidence, but oft-repeated anecdotal evidence, Coach’s Challenges are a pretty unpopular aspect of the modern game. It’s not so much the challenges themselves that are at issue, but the screeching halt they put on a game, usually right after a goal has been scored – typically when excitement is at its peak.
Most folks accept the Coach’s Challenge for goaltender interference and other directly goal-related incidents. Those are probably the ones you want to get right.
But offsides? Come on. There’s nothing worse than seeing a brilliant goal scored and then having to sit around for five to ten minutes waiting for the refs to determine if a player happened to be a quarter-of-an-inch offside on a zone-entry a couple of minutes before the puck entered the net.
It’s a total momentum killer no matter which way the refs decide, and it seems an especially terrible feature to have inserted into a sport that prides itself on being the fastest team sport on Earth and distinguishes itself from football and baseball via not having extended delays between plays.
In this author’s opinion, eliminating the Coach’s Challenge for offsides was the right move. Or, at the very least, to limit them somehow, perhaps by restricting them to offsides that happened no more than 30 seconds prior to a goal or something like that.
The league, however, is going in a different direction. More Coach’s Challenges! More delays! A slower TV-watching experience!
Now, when a player puts the puck over the glass from their own end and is assessed a two-minute penalty for delay of game, their coach can challenge it if they believe the puck did not go directly out of play.
If you thought waiting around for refs to decide when a skate-blade crossed a blue line is tedious, wait until there’s that and also waiting around for refs to determine whether a puck made minute contact with a stick-blade or section of glass on its way to the crowd.
Human error is supposed to be part of the game, and while there’s always a desire for refs to get it right, does that really need to extend to having each decision measured down to the inch via videotape? Or can we not accept that sometimes a player might get a slightly unfair delay of game penalty or might be a half-an-inch offside?
Apparently, the NHL is choosing accuracy over expediency.
Rule 63.8 (Line Change Following Dislodged Net)
There will be an adjustment to Rule 63.8 so that the defensive team cannot make a line change in the event its goaltender accidentally dislodges the net (old language applied just to skater).
The rest of the rules are decidedly less controversial.
This one just makes it so that when a goalie accidentally knocks their own net off in their own end, resulting in a whistle, their team cannot make a line change. Before, this rule just applied to skaters, and goalies could “accidentally” bump their nets off with impunity.
This is a good rule because it removes the ambiguity of refs needing to decide if what a goalie did to their net was accidental or not. It’s just a whistle and no line change, or perhaps an outright delay of game penalty in the most egregious of cases.
Seems fair. And as far as the Canucks go, we can’t seem to remember either Thatcher Demko or Arturs Silovs knocking the net off all that frequently, so it’s probably largely a non-issue.
Rule 75.3 (Unsportsmanlike Conduct – Player Sitting on Boards)
The referee now will provide the offending team (coach and players) with one warning regarding players sitting on the boards (and will so advise the other team). After one warning in a game, the team precipitating the warning will be issued a bench minor penalty for future violations.
Visually, this is a big change. Players are no longer allowed to sit on the boards in anticipation of an impending line change or for any other reason.
Previously, this was pretty common around the NHL. We can probably all picture Alex Ovechkin sitting on the boards with both legs over, eagerly waiting for his shot to hit the ice. We won’t see that anymore – or if we do, it’ll cost Ovechkin and his Capitals a two-minute minor.
The reasoning behind this rule is almost certainly health and safety. In addition to the risk of the players themselves falling, there’s probably a lot to be said about the unnecessary risk of having an extra set of blades around the ice surface – especially a set of blades hanging in the air where they could theoretically collide with someone and cause injury.
In an era of hockey in which we’ve already had some gruesome skate-related injuries, it seems wise to get out ahead of a potential accident and put this preventative measure in place. Bravo to the NHL and NHLPA for it.
From a Canucks perspective, it’s mostly a non-issue. We can’t seem to picture any Canucks doing this with any frequency, and when we checked the image archives from last season under the search “Canucks bench” and “Canucks boards,” we couldn’t find a single picture of a Canuck sitting on the bench during play. (Though we did find a picture of Evander Kane being shoved onto the Canucks bench by Nikita Zadorov, which was a fun memory.)
It does seem like the sort of thing that head coach Rick Tocchet might tell players to knock off if they tried.
Rule 76.4 (Face-Off Procedure – Centers)
Following an icing, the offensive center also now will receive one warning (same as the defensive player) for a face-off violation.
When an icing has occurred, and the defensive centre commits a faceoff violation on the following draw, they will receive one official warning prior to being thrown out of the circle. If they do it again, they get tossed; if their replacement does it, their team is assessed a two-minute minor.
Now, the offensive centre is afforded the same ‘one warning’ policy, whereas previously, they were chucked right away.
It’s a small change, but it stands to reason that any rule change that allows for slightly more faceoff cheating would advantage those teams who are most skilled at faceoffs. Great news, then, for the Vancouver Canucks, who had the third-best faceoff percentage in the Western Conference, and the eighth-best in the NHL. And particularly good news for JT Miller, who won the seventh-most draws in the league last year – and who definitely isn’t adverse to a little rule-violating.
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