Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Do goalies count?

Can someone please direct me to the clause that allows the exception to the new rule forbidding player changes after an icing in the case of a pulled goal tender? This situational exception was never discussed from what I read during the owner's lock-out. I never thought about it. I thought about how it would be great to take advantage of tired teams who couldn't flip the puck over the glass and get a whistle or ice the puck and get a change. For what it is worth, I don't think there is such a clause, not that the CBA has made its way into the public domain.

However, I have witnessed the exception allowed on two separate occasions, both of which were questioned by the play-by-play team. I'm not sure I'm in favor of requiring the goalie to remain on the bench after his team accidentally ices the puck with an extra attacker, but this needs to be clarified. If for some reason a team loses a game because a referee decides to enforce the no-change on an icing, it'll be much worse than allowing Gretzky to avoid the last five minute fighting fine.

And after that decision hits the books, it'll be downright mutiny by any team that gave up a tying goal after a goalie was allowed to return to his net after an icing. It'll be chaos in the streets. It'll be really crappy for any team, its fans, etc negatively impacted by such a decision.

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