Between games of the first day of the Black Bear Classic I had the privilege and opportunity to chat with a Hockey East Association administrator about US hockey's newest change. I'll call it the Five Second Rule Perhaps you've seen this new procedure in the new NHL season or witnessed it in the recent Winter Olympics? Now college hockey is seriously speeding up the game, and other levels are also involved. As explained to me, the procedure is meant to minimize the time spent during stoppages of play. Once the visiting team has had a chance to send out any replacements, the referee raises his hand. The home team now has about 5 seconds to send out any replacements. The referee can, under his discretion, hold his signal for longer (but generally did not in today's Black Bear Classic games). When the referee brings his hand down, the linesman doing the faceoff toots his whistle. The centermen have 5 seconds to get ready for the drop of the puck, but in practice most pucks were dropped today after 2 or 3 seconds. If there is a player offsides at the drop of the puck, the play is whistled dead and the offending team is warned (once per game per team, I presume). Occurrences after the warning get the offending team a minor penalty. In today's games at the Alfond, I witnessed no delay of game penalties and no warnings ... and two very quickly played games! The LSSU/QC game might have broken all records for elapsed time, were it not for a broken plexiglass panel at one point. I'm impressed. Good rule and good implementation! My first thoughts were that it would be good for keeping the fans into a game, continuing the "momentum" of one team or the other, and minimizing delays caused by players creeping into the faceoff circle. And it did in all three cases, IMHO. It also removes the "DROP THE PUCK!" jeer from the fan repertoire! ;-) But as the Hockey East administrator pointed out, it also keeps the players heads in the game. They don't have time to get mad an opponent or to bait before play resumes ... as they must focus on the puck and the quickly resuming play. And it did today, IMHO. Have others noticed this new to US procedure? Like it? Will it stick? cheers, wayne Wayne T. Smith [log in to unmask] Old Town Landing The College Hockey lists: Hockey-L and Hockey3 at http://lists.Maine.edu/