Hockey for Bernies: Icing

Enough is enough.

The following is a simple, illustrated explanation of the icing rule:

These are hockey players playing hockey. The green stickman represents one team, and the purple stickman represents the other. The green stickman has the puck in his own end.

If the purple team is coming on strong, the green stickman might just try to get the puck out of his end. As a result of where he is, the puck will cross the center line. 

IF the puck also crosses the purple team's goal line,

AND a purple guy touches the puck before a green guy,

then "icing" has occurred, and the play will be whistled dead. A faceoff will then come back into the green team's end.

Note:
- Icing would not be enforced if the green team was shorthanded (i.e. had a player in the penalty box)

- If the purple goalie made a move to play the puck, icing would be waved off

- Icing would also be waved off if the puck touched any purple player before crossing both lines

- Icing might be waved off if, in the discretion of the official, a purple player could have played the puck   before it crossed the goal line but chose not to (this is most likely to happen when the purple team is making a line change, and the purple players avoid touching the puck so as to not get called for "too many men" on the ice)

A few important things to know about icing:

Since the 2004-2005 lockout, a team can no longer make a line change after icing the puck.

While it can be exciting to watch two players try to Ben Hur one another as they race to touch the puck, it has resulted in numerous, sometimes catastrophic injuries (as seen here). In international competition, no-touch icing is implemented, where the puck just needs to cross both the center line and the opposing team's goal line to be called for icing (i.e. the purple guy doesn't need to race to touch the puck first). The NHL is currently flirting with the idea of introducing a hybrid icing rule, where a linesman can call icing if it is obvious that a player for the opposing team would touch the puck first. Don Cherry, who normally makes the most asinine, borderline-senile comments during Coach's Corner, is one of hybrid icing's biggest advocates.

Print this out and put it on the fridge mom.