Taylor Fedun Ranks as the Latest Victim of NHL’s Archiac Icing Rules at BetLM

Taylor Fedun Ranks as the Latest Victim of NHL’s Archiac Icing Rules

New head of dis­ci­pline Bren­dan Shana­han faces some tough issues when it comes to revamp­ing the NHL’s sus­pen­sion sys­tems. One of the most dif­fi­cult ques­tions to answer is: “How do you make the game safer with­out elim­i­nat­ing a nec­es­sary phys­i­cal ele­ment from defen­sive play?”

Bren­dan Smith’s hit on Ben Smith earned a deserved pun­ish­ment, but it at least falls under the cat­e­gory of nor­mal hockey checks gone wrong. To some extent, there’s only so much the league can do unless they want the game to turn into flag foot­ball on ice.

That being said, the sport needs to give a good, long look at mea­sures that would elim­i­nate unnec­es­sary risks. The clear­est area is in the way the NHL offi­ci­ates icing. Kur­tis Fos­ter is among the play­ers who suf­fered from one of the most dan­ger­ous col­li­sions in the sport: when an oppos­ing player (usu­ally a forecheck­ing or “crash­ing” for­ward) deliv­ers a bit hit on another player (typ­i­cally a defense­man) who is about to touch the puck to earn an icing whistle.

From the looks of things, Edmon­ton Oil­ers defense­man Tay­lor Fedun (pic­tured on the left) is the lat­est vic­tim of the league’s touch icing pol­icy. Fedun was carted off on a stretcher dur­ing tonight’s pre­sea­son game against the Min­nesota Wild after his skates got tan­gled up in Eric Nystrom’s stick, forc­ing Fedun to hit the boards in an awk­ward way. Nys­trom was attempt­ing to can­cel out an icing call on the play; he received a five-minute major for board­ing and game mis­con­duct, which means he might be Shanahan’s lat­est dis­ci­pli­nary case.

There are three basic schools of though on icing calls. The first one wants the rule to stay the same, point­ing out the occa­sion­ally thrilling chase for the puck. The sec­ond group would pre­fer “hybrid icing” which would give offi­cials lee­way to decide if a puck pur­suit is mer­ited or if the play should be whis­tled dead. Finally, there’s a grow­ing legion of peo­ple who want the league to fol­low other lev­els of hockey by insti­tut­ing “no-touch icing.” (Don Cherry ranks as one of that group’s most promi­nent members.)

Per­son­ally, I’d pre­fer the league to exper­i­ment with hybrid icing. If it works out well, keep it that way. If the sub­jec­tiv­ity causes almost as many bad col­li­sions or con­tro­ver­sial calls, then go all the way to the no-touch rule.

Either way, the cur­rent icing setup is inch­ing its way toward becom­ing an archaic – some might even ague prim­i­tive – rule. The NHL is mak­ing a lot of steps in the right direc­tion, which just makes it that much more baf­fling that they’re not being more pro­gres­sive with an unnec­es­sar­ily dan­ger­ous part of the game that rarely ranks as any­thing more than a tedious, time-wasting procedure.

Related Posts:

• Pet­ti­grew Apol­o­gizes for Lions’ Lat­est After-the-Whistle Penalty
• Miami Check­ing if Arm­strong Broke Rules
• New Whip Rules Changed After Jock­eys’ Outcry
• Top 30 Big Men: Lighter on His Feet, Sullinger Rules the Paint
• New Faces Arrive in ACC Coach­ing Ranks

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•