The fatal flaw of NHL’s ‘Hybrid Icing’
Back in 2013 the NHL identified the issue of injuries due to icing collisions. They decided tried out a new kind of icing that was meant to limit these injuries, appropriately named hybrid icing.
After a successful trial run, the league implemented hybrid icing as the new standard in the NHL. Despite being an improvement over the old style, hybrid icing still poses some issues of its own.
Icing Explained
As one of the more difficult concepts to comprehend in the game of hockey, it is important to grasp icing overall before delving into the issues it has. Essentially icing is a means to prevent defending teams from simply throwing the puck 200 feet down the ice during times of distress in their defensive zone.
Meaning, if two teams were at even-strength and one team were to be in the offensive zone with sustained pressure, the defending team would not be able to shoot the puck from their side of the redline down the ice uninterrupted to complete a line change.
Icing makes this illegal and forces the team that iced the puck to have a face-off in their defensive zone while being unable to change players. The offensive team would be allowed to change and try to take advantage of an offensive zone face-off against unrested players.
If the defensive team in this scenario were killing a penalty or if the puck hit a player, icing would be waived off. It would also not be called if the puck did not have the necessary speed to reach the offensive team’s goal line.
Old Icing
Touch icing, used by the NHL prior to 2013, required that a player from the team that did not ice the puck touch it for it to be called. That is to say that if a player from the team that did ice it made contact first, the call would be waived off.
This resulted in high speed races between players and caused more injuries than it was worth, like this: (warning: this content is rather graphic and depicts a player hitting the boards at an awkward angle, causing injury. It may not be suitable for all.)
As you can see the two players are racing to ensure that the Carolina Hurricanes get the icing call when his lower body collides with the boards. Joni Pitkanen hit awkwardly into the boards and left the game, which took place a few months before the league tested out hybrid icing, on a stretcher.
He sustained a broken heel bone from the collision and missed the remainder of the 2013 season in addition to the entire 2013-14 season.
Hybrid Icing
Hybrid icing, however, removes the contact with the puck. It simply employs the same general concepts as traditional icing, but makes it no touch.
In hybrid icing players are racing toward the face-off dots in the offensive team’s zone. If the first player to reach those dots is from the team that iced it, the icing is waived off and play continues. If that player is from the other team, icing is called and the face-off is brought to the defensive team’s zone.
This is used for the linesmen as a way to gauge which player would touch the puck first without actually making them touch it.
To put that in a visual representation, here is a video explaining hybrid icing:
Fatal Flaw: Objective Confusion
While officiating is in and of itself objective, hybrid icing in particular has been called differently by different linesmen.
Due to the lack of a concrete explanation, linesmen seem to take liberties in deciding whether or not something is actually icing. Furthermore, they all appear to be looking for different things when it comes to actually calling it.
Of course there were issues with consistency in calling icing before it became no touch, but the tendency for linesmen to self define their method of calling it is one that the league should look into.
The simple fact that the rule states officials are supposed to essentially make their best guess as to which player would touch the puck is its biggest flaw. That is much too vague of a statement to justify using it as an official rule in the NHL because it does not mean the same thing to every linesman.
Some are probably looking at it as a race, meaning the first player to reach the dots is the “winner” regardless of how fast he was going. While others are basing it off of speed, meaning that the player with the fastest momentum moving in the direction of the puck would win.
Interpretation variations like this are really what makes hybrid icing less successful than it should be and greatly degrades the value of having icing at all. That being said, a similar claim could be made about penalty calls as well; however, due to the high volume of infractions related to penalties it is much more feasible to correct icing miscalls.
Conclusion
While there is no debating that hybrid icing’s incorporation into the NHL rulebook has prevented injuries, it is not perfect. The league has a few things to consider in regards to this particular rule and could benefit from more specifics about how to call it.
However, officiating is always going to be at least somewhat controversial. Players, coaches and fans alike will continue to debate over what calls are or are not made regardless of how detailed rules are.
Hopefully the league will take a look at the writing and explanation of icing and be open to edits, though. They could even follow suit with what the AHL has done, which disallows teams that ice the puck to take their timeout immediately following the icing.
As always, there are a lot of things to consider when addressing NHL rules and we will have to wait and see what the league decides to change, if anything, to attempt at making the game better.
What are your thoughts on hybrid icing? Do you like that it is up to the officials’ discretion or is that simply part of officiating? Leave your thoughts in the comments.