College hockey: NCAA wants crackdown on late contact, facewashing, obstruction

This is really good news for college hockey fans. I guess I should read my home town newspaper that comes to my house more often. I have to admit that most of my reading is of Brad Schlossman’s blog and or his hockey articles and that's it, the other stuff in the Grand Forks Herald is basically page filler and worthy of bird cage lining. Today, As I was checking out the Grand Forks Herald website for information on UND's newest defensive recruit Ryan Hill, I found this information of the impending changes that is music to my ears. The NCAA wants to eliminate the bush league face wash. I applaud this action and I think it's a very good rule for college hockey; I am sick and tired of seeing players give each other face washes especially after the whistle. I would like to see the NHL do this as well.

Brad Schlossman, Grand Forks Herald: The NCAA wants referees to clean up the after-the-whistle shenanigans in college hockey.

The Rules Committee announced its points of emphasis for the 2009-10 season on Thursday, and at the top of the list was eliminating both contact after the whistle and facewashing, the act of sticking a glove in an opponent’s face.

Facewashing is a common form of retaliation that doesn’t draw penalties.

Hockey gloves, covered in perspiration, tend to smell awful. So players will skate up to an opponent, stick their palm in his face and let him take a whiff of the stench.

The Rules Committee, however, views this as a violation of the “grasping the facemask” rule. Planting an open hand in an opponents face should result in a minor penalty, it says.

Pushing the facemask or moving the hand back-and-forth on it should result in a major penalty, and twisting or pulling on the mask should be a game disqualification under the excessive roughness category.

“The committee believes altercations after the whistle are a growing and disturbing trend,” the NCAA said in a release. “Any contact to the head tends to escalate altercations. After reviewing numerous situations, the committee expressed its concern about student-athlete safety as well as the negative effect on the game’s image.”

I was wondering how long it would take to get to this discussion came up? The subject of obstruction on the puck carrier has come up again this summer and the NCAA rules committee has said that it would like to have the puck carrier protected, “the expectation of overall enforcement is higher.” Yeah, I hope that the WCHA officials can figure it out this year and call the game the way it is supposed to be called. If you take your hand off of your stick to hold up the person with the puck it’s a penalty. If you slash, hook, hold interfere with the opposition moving the puck up ice it’s a penalty.

Protecting the puck carrier

Last year, the NCAA’s big mandate was to do a better job protecting the puck carrier.

This was an effort to increase scoring chances and the excitement of the game by letting skilled players proceed without being hooked or held.

Midway through the year, however, multiple Western Collegiate Hockey Association coaches said they felt that the referees had backed off on making those calls.

The NCAA again addressed that rule this summer.

“As all levels of NCAA ice hockey enter the second season with the two-referee system,” it writes, “the expectation of overall enforcement is higher.”