Bettman says he’s okay if you want to bring back the rule against forward passes, he doesn’t mind if you want to revert to old-school icing, he just demends you keep it to one rule change; you know, evolution is better than revolution…
What rule are you changing, tweaking, binning or creating.
It wouldn’t change much, but a defender clearing the puck over the glass should be treated the same as icing. If the team clears the puck over the glass before exiting their zone after the subsequent face off then call a Delay of Game.
I can’t stand the Delay of Game rule for accidental pucks over the glass, though. It doesn’t feel in the spirit of what Delay of Game means to me, at least not anymore than intentionally icing the puck.
I think the big difference is the potential for injury.
Intentionall icing just sends the puck down the ice, intentional puck-over-the-glass could really hurt someone, especially if its a kid or an older person.
I think keeping it as a penalty makes sense to discourage its use as a tactic to relieve the pressure like you do with icing.
I should be clear, I’m advocating for a return to how it was called pre-lockout. Putting the puck over the glass wasn’t an automatic delay of game, but it could be a penalty at the ref’s discretion (e.g. team is on the penalty kill and puts it over the glass to get a breather).
Prior to the lockout, this just didn’t happen that often, at least not much more often than it happens today. The reason the rule was introduced coming out of the lockout was to increase the amount of goals by increasing the number of ways teams could go on the power play.
