If this keeps up, the NHL is going to be a lot uglier this season.
With the preseason schedule in full swing, there already have been a shocking amount of slashing penalties and faceoff violations called, something the league said it was going to have its officials focus on this year, but which hardly anyone thought was going to be this extreme.
“Seriously,” Islanders coach Doug Weight said after his team’s 1-0 overtime loss to the Rangers on Monday night, “it was awful.”
That game featured 18 combined penalties, nine of them for slashing and one for a faceoff violation. That went with zero goals through the first 60 minutes before Rangers rookie defenseman Neal Pionk scored 2:31 into the 3-on-3 overtime.
When young Islanders defenseman Scott Mayfield was called for his second slashing penalty of the game 10:29 into the second period, his stick hardly grazed the stick of an oncoming Rangers’ winger. Weight actually got upset at the call and had a heated conversation with the referee before backing off, realizing it’s still the preseason.
“I get it, you have to get it in the league and you have to set a precedent with the sticks and the things like that,” said Weight, whose team continued the preseason with a 3-2 win over the Flyers at Barclays Center on Wednesday night, while a split-squad lost, 3-2 in overtime to Philadelphia in Allentown, Pa. “It was tough to get guys involved. You’ve got guys trying to make hockey clubs, and they’re are trying to make a statement. They’re generally not going to be the guys that are killing all the penalties on the power plays. So it was tough.… No blame, I’m just saying it was tough.”
There have been rule changes in the past, none more drastic than after the 2004-05 lockout, when the rules regarding hooking, holding and interference were made stricter and enforced with guile. What’s happening now, however, isn’t a rule change, just stricter enforcement of existing rules. The league also didn’t send out a tutorial video until Monday afternoon, just hours before most teams made their preseason debuts.
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The hope from the players is that the beginning of preseason is just a time for the referees to make it clear that this is their goal, and that it will tone down once the games start to mean something. Of course, the league wants both of those rules to be strictly enforced during the regular season as well, but to what degree only will be seen once those games start. No matter what, it’s going to be an adjustment from what most players have experienced their whole careers.
“Even worse for the older guys,” Weight said. “We’ve been swinging our sticks for 20 years. It’s a habit, a frustration. The hard thing is — over the last 10 years — now I can’t grab your free hand. It’s just natural to get waxed.”
The players can more easily adjust to the faceoff rules, which is making sure the wingers stay on the proper side of their hashmarks and stay squared up. But the slashing is often reactionary, the way most players were taught to play the game. Some of the slashes that were called Monday night were hardly more than sticks coming off the ice, and the players were well aware of how different that was.
“If every time your stick gets lifted off the ice a slashing penalty gets called, then it’s going to be tough,” Islanders forward Cal Clutterbuck said. “There’s slashing and then there’s just playing the game. There’s a difference.”
Monday’s eight games included an average of 16 penalties per game, an average of six slashing calls, and just two games without a faceoff violation. No game was worse than the Capitals at the Devils, which had 20 penalties, including three faceoff violations. The enforcement created ugly games with almost no flow.
“I understand they’re doing it to drive it home here in the preseason and then maybe back off 20 percent,” Clutterbuck said. “It’s tough being out there for that.”