On today’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, Frank Seravalli stopped by to talk about the general managers’ meetings in Florida while looking at some potential rule changes.
Mike McKenna: On Monday, what was discussed and can we expect any rule changes? It’s always a hot topic, but what can we expect to see on the ice next season?
Frank Seravalli: Well, lots of topics but not much progress in terms of where the NHL and its general managers could go with potential rule changes. One of the big things that was discussed when the GMs were divided into four different groups of eight, was whether we should slow down fighting after free hits.
Frank Seravalli: I’ll throw you some numbers, 89 percent of the fights that took place with players defending teammates took place after free kicks, which means that 11 percent of the shots were dirty. It’s often difficult for players to decide this on the fly and they still end up dropping the gloves after a big hit. What’s interesting is that of those 89% of fights resulting from free kicks, only 42% of those players ended up being penalized with the instigator penalty.
One thing they talked about Monday was whether we should take the instigator penalty and enforce it more and call it more. This comes with two minutes for incitement, a five-minute major penalty and a 10-minute professional misconduct. This is quite heavy in itself at 17 minutes, do we need to change the structure of this? Maybe make it a double minor and let it stand alone and not come with these other two automatic penalties, so we make it a five-minute major, there’s a lot of different ways for them to do it. They could change the instigator rule itself, they could ask the authorities to enforce it more. However, the general managers were undecided on this subject.
One of the other things they talked about today was the idea of a video review or the possibility of instituting a coach challenge for inadvertent high sticks. So high sticks that result from friendly fire or a teammate hitting another teammate in the face with a stick, which is something we often see with raised sticks. The other thing was the washers on the glass, that’s something that should be part of the video review element. The officials gather and make a decision on the ice, but sometimes the camera has a better view. These are a few topics discussed, but I’m not convinced that we will end up finishing this meeting without significant changes to the rules.
You can watch the full episode here…
