Breaking News - NHL announces major rule change for next season

PUBLICATION

Josh tupper
September 6, 2022 (9:13 PM)

SHARE THIS STORY

Every year the NHL and it's rules committee look for ways to better improve the game. The league often makes slight tweaks to rules to try and better handle situations that they've encountered over the past season. Well that's exactly what the league announced today.

This season the league has opted to only make one adjustment to the rulebook. Going forward referees will be allowed to use video replay to completely void a major penalty, rather than simply downgrading it to a minor penalty.

According to Scouting the Refs the new rule reads as follows:

Rule 20.6 previously only allowed the officials to confirm the original major penalty call or downgrade it to a minor. They now have a third option to wipe it out completely.

Here's the updated rule, change in bold:

The Referee shall have the following options after video review of his own call: (i) confirming his original Major Penalty call; (ii) reducing his original Major Penalty call to a lesser penalty; or (iii) rescinding the original Major Penalty altogether.

The old rule also required the officials downgrade the penalty to a lesser penalty of the same infraction. That is no longer the case. A major boarding penalty could, after review, be downgraded to a minor for cross-checking.

This change does not apply to match penalty reviews.

This rule change should help officials get more calls right in the future. This will allow officials to review more plays that happen at a high speed to ensure that players aren't penalized for clean plays.