At Conte Forum, the home bench is entirely in the BC half of the ice - that
is, the half BC defends in the first and third periods.  The visiting bench
is directly across the ice, which means that for two of the three periods,
the visitor has the disadvantage of its players coming on the ice in the
offensive half of the ice while BC's players come on in their own end.
Also, if a team is going to pull the goalie, the visiting goalie has
farther to go to the bench than the BC goalie.
 
This is considered to be an unfavorable condition of play and as such, the
visiting team (the team disadvantaged) can request prior to the game that
a change of ends occur at the halfway point of the third.  Teams I have
seen take advantage of this in the past are Maine, BU and Minnesota - in
fact, Maine used to *always* do this when they played at Conte Forum.  It
was funny to see fans think the game was over and count down the time, then
start to head for the exits when there was still half a period to be played.
 
Note that the request must be made prior to the game.  You can't wait until
the third period to see if the game is close.
 
Also, it is interesting that such a switch of ends used to take place often
at BC's old rink as well, the McHugh Forum.  The end the visitors defended,
I believe, had extremely poor lighting as compared to the BC end.
---
Mike Machnik    [log in to unmask]   Color Voice of the Merrimack Warriors
(Any opinions expressed above are strictly those of the poster.)    *HMN*