Veteran Level 3s are very familiar with the most misunderstood rule in hockey.

It’s USA Hockey Rule 624, Icing the Puck.

In fact, many games go south right from the opening drop due to incredible ignorance over the icing rule. You know what happens. The puck gets shot from behind the red line and the rubber goes completely beyond the opponent’s goal line. Classic Rule 624(a) icing, right?

For low-level JV coaches, yes.

For students of the rulebook, no.

See, there’s this other portion of the icing rule, known as 624(b)(5):

Icing shall be mollified, if:

In the opinion of the linesman, an opposing player, except the goalkeeper, has an opportunity to play the puck, and has not done so, prior to the puck crossing the goal line.

Now here’s the usual scenario – the puck is shot from beyond the red line at medium speed, and an opposing player does not make maximum effort to play the puck, thinking that an icing will be called.

Forget it. Us veteran officials have seen it all. Guys lifting their sticks and letting the puck slide by. Defenders turning the other way to tie up a winger. Or skaters just dogging it to draw an icing, when on their very last shift, they rocketed through the neutral zone on a loose puck breakaway. These are real easy washouts for us.

Naturally, players, parents and coaches don’t always get it. They haven’t read the rule. They don’t comprehend that icing doesn’t just mean shooting a puck from behind the red line which travels past the opponent’s goal line. 

Let’s look at the USA Casebook, page 279, Situations 19 and 20. Here’s what it says:

The opposing team must make every effort to play the puck before it crosses the goal line. Should the official feel as though the opposing team, other than the goalkeeper, was able to play the puck, icing shall be nullified. The icing must be nullified the moment the player chooses to play the body instead of the puck.

Now when you’re talking about veteran officials with resumes containing 2,500-plus games, those guys can quickly tell when a player isn’t making an honest effort to play a puck. And when OS out-skates high-schoolers 40 years OS’s junior to a puck traveling toward the goal line, you bet that potential icing’s going to be washed.

Hey, you rule junkies – remember, if a team has no goalkeeper and plays with a sixth skater manning the crease, that player does not have goalkeeper’s privileges and must play any puck that is potentially iced. Got that?

Calm down, beer leaguers. OS knows all about the fallacy regarding icing washouts after 11 p.m. Thing is, you’ve got it all wrong. Us veteran officials don’t care about the hour. Rather, it would be an insult to a defender’s skating ability to conclude that he’s too slow to retrieve the puck prior to it crossing the goal line. Don’t want to shoot down a guy’s confidence. That’s not what we’re about.

Icing the puck. Learn this rule and the numerous exceptions during the offseason and get a better understanding of why washouts occur.

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