The NCAA Men’s and Women’s Ice Hockey Rules Committee proposed that all video reviews for offsides or too many players on the ice infractions leading to a goal in the regular season be reviewed by coach’s challenges only.
Currently, these potential infractions can be reviewed by a coach’s challenge or at the on-ice officials’ discretion in the last 10 minutes of a game or in the overtime period.
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All rules changes must be approved by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel, which is scheduled to consider the ice hockey rules recommendations via conference call July 24.
Committee members, who met this week in Indianapolis, thoroughly discussed all aspects of video review and decided the sport is best served by handling these two scenarios through the coach’s challenge system.
The pace and flow of the game should be enhanced because there would be fewer stoppages in play.
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“Our goal coming into the meeting was to evaluate all the rules changes made last year,” said Wayne Dean, committee chair and deputy director of athletics at Yale. “We wanted to determine if we needed to adjust any rules due to unintended consequences. The feedback we received from the membership was the video replay criteria was confusing and caused delays in the game. The committee’s goal is to simplify the process. We feel we accomplish this with the adjustment.”
In all other instances in which video review is allowed, reviews may be initiated by a coach’s challenge or at the discretion of the on-ice official.
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Overtime
The committee recommended that all regular-season tournament games must be played in the same manner as regular-season games, with one exception. If the game is tied after regulation play, a five-minute 5-on-5 sudden-death overtime period must be played. If the game remains tied following this period, regular-season tournaments have the option of using one of the following formats:
- A shootout.
- A five-minute 3-on-3 sudden-death period followed by a sudden-death shootout.
- 20-minute sudden-death overtime periods, the one exception.
