On Feb. 20, Eric Hoffman wrote:
 
>3.  With about 5 seconds remaining in original coincidental minors,
>    a SLU player gets caught flat footed and is forced to hook down
>    a Princeton player along the far boards in the SLU zone.
>
>The question is how should this be handled?  If I remember correctly,
>from a discussion on this list last fall, teams are not allowed to skate
>with less than 3 skaters.  Clearly then, 3x2 is not right.  My recollection
>of that discussion was that if a team was called for 3 penalties
>(i.e. down to 2 skaters) a forfeit was to be declared.  Well, a forefeit
>wasn't declared. The start of the last two minute minor was delayed
>until the remaining 5 seconds of the coincidentals had been played.
>Therefore the teams skated 3x3.  Perhaps the mitigating circumstance here
>is the coincidental minors.  Rules gurus?
 
Eric, as much as most people love to think that the refs don't know what
they're doing, most of the time they do. In this case, they got the call
right on the money.
 
Let's look at a scenario similar to this, but with the times a little bit
more managable for discussion's sake (time listed as time remaining):
 
Time    Team A    Team B
10:00   2 min.    2 min.    teams  skate 4-on-4
 
9:00    2 min.    5 min.    teams skate 3-on-3 (if these had both been 2 min.,
                            they would have washed out, and the teams would
                            have remained 4-on-4)
 
8:30    2 min.              teams stay 3-on-3 (you can never go below 3-on-3)
                            Here's where it gets tricky. The third penalty to
                            the Team A player is now delayed, and will start
                            at 8:00. This penalty will pop up automatically on
                            the scoreboard at 8:00. The Team A player who was
                            penalized at 10:00 must remain in the penalty box
                            until the first whistle after 8:00, but the Team B
                            player penalized at 10:00 comes out on the fly at
                            8:00. This means that now Team B is on a 4-on-3 pp.
                            The Team A player penalized at 9:00 comes out on the
                            fly at 7:00, or earlier if his team is scored upon.
                            The Team B player with the major comes out at 4:00
                            the fly, regardless of scoring, obviously. But, the
                            Team A player penalized at 8:30 (whose penalty
                            doesn't start until 8:00, remember?) won't come out
                            until 6:00, regardless of scoring, because the teams
                            will be skating 4-on-4.
 
Ok. Everybody got that? There will be a quiz on this in tomorrow's class.
 
John Patterson
 
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