Quite honestly, the easiest way to determine assists in my opinion is to use change of possession as the only guideline. In other words, unless there is a definite change of possession, the passing sequence continues and there is a goal and the last two players other than the goal scorer to be involed in the sequence receive assists. I'll give you an example of this sequence of passes -- 15(goal scorer)-16-15-16-15-16-15-16-8. In this instance, the scoring would be 15 from 16 and 8. Some argue you shouldn't go that far back, but where do you draw the line? To me, change of possession is the easiest, because that's pretty easy to determine. As for the examples Mike and Wayne gave, I believe that if the other team accidentally tips the puck into his own net or it goes off his pads into his own net you should not penalize the offensive team. And this goes back to change of possession. However, if a player actually shoots it into his own net by mistake, then obviously the goal should be unassisted. As for a player body checking an opponent off the puck and then having his teammate pick up the puck and go in and score and then awarding the player that body-checked the opponent off the puck an assist....I'm not a fan of giving the player an assist because I think it opens up too many loopholes. I can't argue that is was a direct contribution to the goal, however, then you could start to argue that the off winger held up his man (perhaps even illegally) and he should get credit for an assist. Summing this up, it is easiest, in my opinion to use change of possession as the rule of thumb in awarding assists and also stipulate that a player must touch the puck to get credit for an assist. (and yes, this includes kicking the puck to a teammate with the skate). As for what it cost to implement using video replay to determine assists in the WCHA....not much...a small TV monitor ($150-$200), a VCR ($150-$250) a splitter ($5), and some cable ($20). At our rink the coaches video is done from the pressbox so it is a piece of cake. But, at Colorado College (the old Broadmoor), the video was done on the opposite side of the pressbox. They just simply ran cable across the top of the rafters to the pressbox side and plugged right into the camera feed. It's not complicated to do, and not expensive. One final comment. What Keith said happened at Bowling Green is what shouldn't happen in college hockey. As he described it, the Notre Dame players said #2 and #10 should have assists on a goal originally announced unassisted. And after checking to make sure that #2 and #10 were on the ice, the assists were just added. The technology to use replay is right in everyone's lap and not that costly or difficult to set up. We had a similar situation here last weekend with North Dakota where the North Dakota media said on two different occasions that North Dakota players should have assists on certain goals. We took the information down and reviewed the goals after the period. In both cases, the media was wrong. One goal was called unassisted, and rightly so, and the other goal had one assist (they wanted two), and that goal did just have one assist. Enough rambling for now. I'm interested in responses. Regards, Dave Fischer, MTU SID