Ejections for fighting? 3-on-3 playoff overtime? Olympics rules court is in session

Welcome back to Rules Court, where we’re fixing the NHL, one new rule at a time.

Usually, that means considering your suggestions. But occasionally, we like to look elsewhere for inspiration, such as stealing ideas form other leagues. We’re doing that again today, because as you may have heard, there’s an international tournament going on. It’s called the Olympics, and the NHL was kind enough to send its players over for a change.

That NHL participation has meant that the rulebook used in the Olympics is almost identical to the one we all know and love. Almost, but not quite. As Pierre LeBrun reported last week, the “blended” approach to officiating still left a few differences between the IIHF and the NHL. And that got us wondering: Could the NHL learn something from international hockey?

Let’s see. Pierre’s article included nine differences between the two rulebooks. We’re going to put seven of them on trial today. (We cut the ones about switching ends for overtime and players losing their helmets during play, since they’re relatively minor and we don’t have a “meh” option for our rulings.) 

We convened the usual jurors – Sean Gentille, Shayna Goldman and Sean McIndoe – and cut-and-pasted Pierre’s description of the differences. If at least two of us approve the change, it becomes a new NHL rule, effective immediately. (Editor’s note: That’s not true.) (McIndoe’s note: OK, but it should be.)

While most hockey fans agree that the NHL is a perfectly run league with zero room for improvement, could we still find some inspiration from elsewhere? Let’s find out.

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The "Rule of Cool"? Loaning stars to other teams? NHL Rules Court is back in session

It’s time for another session of Rules Court, the feature where you make the case for any kind of change that you think would improve the NHL, and a jury of three of us votes on it. Convince at least two of us, and… well, nothing happens, but you get to feel like you’re not quite so alone in the world. That’s important, right? Sure it is.

This time around, we’ve got the usual jury of Shayna Goldman, Sean McIndoe, and Sean Gentille. We have seven of your proposals to consider, plus a bonus suggestion that will show up in today’s newsletter. (Subscribe now!) Last time, you were only able to get two of your proposals through. Will you do any better this time? Let’s find out, because court is now in session.

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One-way offside? Free range faceoffs? NHL Rules Court is back in session

Welcome to Rules Court, the feature where you send in your proposals for NHL rule changes and three of us vote on them. Convince at least two of us, and your rule is passed.

This is, by my count, the ninth edition of this feature. Over the years, we’ve changed everything from the salary cap to replay review to the playoff format, in some cases multiple times. We’ve also made it so that coaches have walk across the ice to serve bench minors. We’re really doing the lord’s work, is what I’m trying to say.

Today we’re back with seven new suggestions sent in by readers. They’ll be reviewed by Sean, Other Sean and Shayna (aka Almost Sean). Will any get the required YES votes to be passed into the NHL rulebook? Let’s find out…

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Tax-adjusted salary cap? Single game playoff tie-breakers? NHL Rules Court returns

Welcome back to Rules Court, where things will look a little different this time around.

Without digging into the details, we had to make the difficult decision to fire one of our long-serving judges because he knows what he did. That opens a spot for Shayna Goldman to join holdovers Sean Gentille and Sean McIndoe. Welcome, Shayna, and we hope you realize what you’ve signed up for.

The rest of the gimmick hasn’t changed. You send in your proposals for changes to the NHL rulebook, CBA or whatever else. The three of us consider your argument and cast our vote. Convince at least two of us, and your new rule becomes reality, just as soon as Gary Bettman gets back to us.

We have eight cases on the docket this time. Let’s see how many can make the grade.

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Rules court: Draft your playoff opponents? Goalies serve penalties? Guaranteed OT?

A few weeks ago, the NHL GMs got together, talked about a bunch of potential rule changes, and then voted to barely do anything at all. The game is great, no need to change anything, let’s hit the golf course.

You guys don’t agree. We know this, because we have a mailbox where you can submit your ideas for rule changes, and it’s constantly overflowing. Some of you want to tinker, some of you are thinking a bit bigger than that, and some of you are quite frankly out of your minds. 

All of which is to say, it’s time for another edition of Rules Court, the feature where you submit your ideas, and the three of us vote on them. Convince two out of three, and your rule is passed. We have eight new cases on the docket this time around, so court is in session.

Have the higher-seeded playoff teams “draft” their opponents, meaning the top seed in each conference would have the right to choose any other team as their first-round matchup. That could be the worst team according to record, but could also be a team that was viewed as an easier matchup due to injuries, slumps, head-to-head history, etc. – A ton of you, especially after the PWHL announced that they’d be adopting this rule.

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Cap discounts for draft picks? Mid-game substitutions? NHL Rules Court returns

Please rise, the sixth session of Rules Court is now… uh, in session.

Sorry, I’m a little thrown off, and I blame you. It turns out, you guys are weird. Or at least your ideas can be, as we’re going to see in just a bit.

First, for those of you who are new to this, here’s how it works. The readers submit a rule proposal, about the on-ice rules or the CBA or anything else you’d like to see change. Our three-man panel of Sean Gentille, Ian Mendes and Sean McIndoe vote on whether the NHL should adopt it. If you can convince at least two of us, the motion is carried and your rule becomes official. (Note: This does not happen.)

You can find previous editions here, here, here, here and here, in which we’ve already made changes like abolishing offsides, adopting the 3-2-1-0 point system, and making it so that the referee has to skate around holding up both arms if there are two delayed penalties at the same time. Honestly, that last one may have been our finest work so far. The bar is high, but let’s see what you were able to come up with this time…

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No more offsides? Uncontested faceoffs? The end of EBUGs? Rules Court returns

Welcome back to Rules Court, where you submit your ideas for NHL rule changes and three of us (Sean McIndoe, Ian Mendes and Sean Gentille ) vote on them. Everything is up for discussion – on the ice or off, big or small, ideas that feels realistic and others that very much don’t. You make your case, and then the three of us reach a verdict. Convince at least two of us, and your rule is passed.

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Three-point games? Legal hand passes? Trading points for cap space? Rules court returns

Welcome back to Rules Court. Please rise, court is in session.

If you’re new to Rules Court, the concept is simple. You, the readers, submit your ideas for changes to the NHL rulebook. They can be new rules, tweaks to old ones, or the elimination of something that’s already there. On the ice or off. Small, big, or insanely game-changing. You make your best case, and then a three-judge panel of me, Ian Mendes and Sean Gentille make our ruling. Convince at least two of us, and your new rule is passed and the NHL is legally bound to adopt it. (Our lawyers are still working on that part, as the league is being weird about returning out calls.)

Previous sessions of rules court have seen us adopt extended overtime if a team is shorthanded, replace the shootout with 2-on-1s, and adopt a half-court rule. And yet the suggestions keep pouring in, sending a clear signal that you people are insane our readers have a ton of great ideas for improving the league.

Let’s see what you have for us this time…

The way the current system for points in the standings is set up doesn’t make sense from a fairness perspective or a mathematical perspective.  Instead of two points for some games and three points for others, points should be set up as follows:

- Outright win in regulation:  three points

- Shootout/overtime win: two points

- Shootout/overtime loss:  one point

- Outright loss:  zero points

In addition to giving out three points for every game, it rewards a win in regulation (real, non 3-on-3 hockey).  It gives everyone at least one point for getting to overtime, and rewards the team that wins in overtime/the shootout/the 2-on-1 thing you approved last time. – Chuck F. (and many others)

 McIndoe: Yep. I’ve been crusading against the current point system for nearly a decade. There’s really no defending how we do things now. The loser point is awful – it screws up the standings, inflates everyone’s record, makes the NHL the laughingstock of other leagues, and (worst of all) incentivizes boring play late in tie games, which is when the drama should be at its highest. 

So yes, let’s switch to 3-2-1-0. Is it perfect? No. It’s still giving out a loser point, for example, and breaks with the traditional two points for a win the league has had for a century. I know some people would prefer to just go to wins and losses, or bring back ties, or a dozen other possible plans. But that’s the problem with how we do things now: It’s so stupid that literally any alternative would be better, so we get paralyzed by all the options. We need to just pick something and go with that, because literally anything else will be a massive improvement. The 3-2-1-0 system works, so I’m on board. YES.

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Debating all those bizarre new 3ICE rules in a special session of Rules Court

Someday, maybe, we’ll look back at the 3ICE three-on-three hockey league’s inaugural season as the start of something. A reliably fun summer distraction? Perhaps. A way for players on the fringe of pro hockey to make solid money? We’re already there, in fact.

No matter what happens down the line, though, the league has already accomplished something huge. It’s a rules test kitchen. What’s more honorable than that? What could be more important?

So, for our third edition of Rules Court, we didn’t ask for your submissions. The 3ICE rulebook took care of that. All that’s left is for us — Sean McIndoe, Ian Mendes and Sean Gentille — is to cherrypick some of the league’s gutsier innovations and figure out whether they could (or should) be applied to NHL games. We weren’t necessarily limiting them to overtime, either.

What works? What doesn’t? And what maybe-kinda-sorta-someday could make sense? We debated seven separate 3ICE-specific rules, as outlined in Greg Wyshynski’s deep dive on the league’s first season at ESPN.

As always, we sent a copy of our work to the NHL’s Manhattan office (via fax) and expect to hear back from them forthwith.

No power plays

That’s right. The folks at 3ICE have decided to do away with special teams entirely. There are still penalties, but they no longer result in a man advantage. Instead, every call leads to a penalty shot. (More on those in a second.)

Team Trottier takes the 3-1 lead after this penalty shot ⬇️ @3IceHockey pic.twitter.com/QOIwJfiBGz

— CBS Sports Network (@CBSSportsNet) June 25, 2022

McIndoe: Nope!

Look, I can already sense that I might be the grumpy old man of the group here, and I’m good with that. The waistband on my pants is chafing my armpits, I want you to get off my lawn, and I don’t think we need radical changes to the very soul of the sport to improve things in the NHL. I’m not against change — I’m the guy who thinks we could solve all sorts of problems by just making the nets bigger and is willing to fight you about it — but this sort of thing is a bridge too far.

Power plays are cool. Penalty killing is cool. Penalty shots are also cool, when they’re rare, which they were back before the shootout came along and made them feel pedestrian. Replacing power plays with penalty shots would be overkill, would turn even-strength play into a diving contest, and would just make everyone even madder at the referees for not calling obvious fouls in the name of game management.

We’re one proposal in and I’m already cranky. NO.

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Replace shootouts with 2-on-1s? No free icing on penalty kills? Goalies are fair game? Rules Court is back in session

Everyone please rise, Rules Court is back in session.

If you missed the first edition a few months ago, the concept is simple. You send in your proposed NHL rule changes – big or small, realistic or silly – and make your best case for them. A jury of me, Sean Gentille and Ian Mendes will consider your arguments and deliver our verdict. Convince at least two out of three us, and your proposal becomes an official new NHL rule. (Note: It will not become an official new NHL rule.)

Last time, we considered seven proposals and voted yes on three of them. Not bad, but now that you’ve had a while to think about making your case, I’d expect the success rate to go up. You submitted over 100 new entries for this edition, and we picked eight to consider. Let’s see how you did…

Note: Submissions have been edited for clarity and style.

Call icing infractions for teams on the penalty kill. Why does a guilty team get the advantage of being able to clear the puck and change? Never made sense to me. – Anthony L

Mendes: I’ve also never understood why a penalized team gains an exception to a rule (icing) that is in effect while teams are at even strength. Like, imagine if penalized teams were allowed to clear the puck over the glass as many times as they wanted during a penalty kill. It’s basically the same logic here. A rule that is in effect during even strength situations mysteriously vanishes for random two-minute intervals during the course of a game.

When penalized teams are allowed to ice the puck, they’re able to change on the fly during a penalty kill – putting a fresh unit on the ice. But if the icing was enforced as it should be, all penalty killers would be forced to stay on the ice for the ensuing face off in their own zone. I could see how this could make it difficult for shorthanded teams to execute line changes, especially in the second period when the “long change” is in effect. But I believe this should lead to more goals and I’m always in favour of that. YES.

McIndoe: As the guy who gets to sort through all the suggestions you guys send in, I can say that this one was extremely popular, maybe even the one that showed up most often. And on the surface, I get it. We want offense, powerplays should be more dangerous, and watching a team shoot the puck all the way down the ice to kill time is boring.

My one concern is the same one I have with lots of offense-friendly changes: That coaches would ruin it, in this case by just having their teams ice it anyway, under the logic that killing even ten seconds of a two-minute powerplay is worth the offensive zone faceoff. Or maybe we just see players perfect the art of the rink-wide flip that doesn’t quite make it all the way to the icing line. Either way, I don’t think this one would work as well as people seem to think, but I’m willing to give it a try. Mark me down for a hesitant YES.

Gentille: That’s the way a lot of these debates tend to go, yeah? One of us says, “Yeah, of course this should be a rule,” another says, “Sure, but coaches are gonna find some way to warp and ruin it,” and then we eventually settle on, “OK, mark up another tentative yes.” And fellas, we’ve got another one. Do I think some coaches would eventually instruct players to ignore the illegality of it all? Yeah. I also tend to think that there’s something ingrained in coaches — it could be genetic, I’m not a scientist — that’ll still win out, in plenty of cases.

And either way, it’s worth it. Legalized icing during the P.K. is one of those things that we’ve watched our entire lives and internalized, for whatever reason, as being something other than nonsensical and unfair. It’s both, actually. If your guy is in the box, there shouldn’t be a temporary rule change to your advantage. YES

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Powerplays that don’t end on a goal? Extended overtime? Goals worth double? NHL Rules Court is in session

If you’re a fan of the NHL, you know the drill. The game is good, but it could be better, and you know exactly how to make that happen. If the league would just change one or two or a few dozen rules, they’d have a better product. And you’re sure that everyone would agree with you, if you just had a chance to make your case.

Now you do. Welcome to NHL Rules Court.

The concept is simple. You, the readers, come up with ideas for new or adjusted rules you’d like to see in the NHL. They can be small tweaks or seismic changes, reasonable or outrageous or anywhere in between. You send them in, and they’ll be considered by a jury of Sean Gentille, Sean McIndoe and Ian Mendes. Convince at least two of us, and your rule is passed and goes into the NHL rulebook.

Well, we’re still working on that last part. The league is being weird about returning our phone calls. For now, this is all for fun. Consider it a dry run for when they smarten up and put us in charge.

Court is in session. Let’s see what you came up.

Note: Submissions have been edited for clarity and style.

One rule change I’d propose would be that all penalties go full duration regardless of any goals scored. This would include any goals scored on a delayed penalty not cancelling out the PP, which is already a rule in the NCAA.

Logically a penalty is a penalty, why is it cancelled out because the opposition was successful at doing the thing they are supposed to do? – Stephen D.

Gentille: This seems like the single easiest “yes” on the board, right? We already have potentially unlimited goals on major penalties, so this isn’t much of a jump. If you can run up the score in two minutes, or after a delayed call, so be it. To the penalty-drawer goes the spoils. A minor concern, though: that officials would be even less apt to make calls in high-leverage situations out of their own distaste for giving a team that many bites at the apple. YES

Mendes: I’m worried the most about Gentille’s last point: That referees – who are already reluctant to call penalties in tight spots – would push that whistle even deeper down into their pockets under this scenario. Suddenly, calling a two-minute minor late in the game could have an even bigger swing in momentum.

So here is my proposed compromise: Don’t wipe out minor penalties when a team scores a goal during a delayed call. I’ve never understood why a minor penalty gets wiped out when a team pulls their goalie for an extra attacker and then scores. Under this compromise, you’re now allowing teams to score multiple goals off one infraction.

But in regards to this specific rule change as outlined above, I’ll take a pass because I just don’t trust the officiating. And I don’t want to see a team scored on twice because their defenceman accidentally put the puck over the glass. NO

McIndoe: Yep, Ian has it exactly right – with any new rule, we have to be afraid of the unintended consequences. This proposal comes up at a lot and it seems to make sense. But in reality, we’d have refs who were even more terrified to make a call than they are now. You think they’re hesitant to call a minor late in a game when it might lead to a key goal? Imagine it could lead to three. This rule worked fine for a long time in the early days of this league, but I just don’t trust weak-kneed modern refs not to ruin this one. NO

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