The Athletic Hockey Show - Answering the hockey questions you may have been afraid to ask

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

As a new fan to the sport, or a hockey fan for thirty years, there may be some rules in the NHL you may be confused about. Ian and Sean spend this episode focusing on penalties: breaking down questions listeners had about offsetting penalties, the instigator call, embellishment, and more!Have a question for Ian and Sean? Email [e-mail] or leave a VM: [phone]!Save on a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back, everybody. It is your Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Ian Mendez, Sean McAndo with you, as always, on a Thursday. And tell you what, look, we're in the month of August. And we thought, let's do something a little bit different. Because, you know, in August, news cycle's a little bit slow. Let's be honest, out of the 12 months, August is probably the quietest month with the least amount of news going on.

And we thought, you know what, this is the perfect time to delve into some questions that are kind of more wide-ranging, big picture, kind of rules-based, that type of thing. So I'll tell you what we're going to do, not only for this week, but for next week. So the first two August episodes here for the Thursday edition of the athletic hockey show, we're going to tackle your questions.

And I'll tell you what, Sean, maybe you can kind of give the listeners the premise where you came up with this idea, how you solicited these questions, because it's quite a range of questions we have. In fact, like we said, we probably got two episodes worth here. But maybe just fill our listeners

in how you came up with this idea. Yeah, the concept here is the questions that you have wondered but weren't either sure how to ask or, you know, teachers used to say there are

no dumb questions. And I believe in that. But I know as hockey fans, there is a lot of stuff. This is a complicated game, complicated league. And there's stuff that maybe you just don't know. Maybe at some point you just realize, like, I don't know what people

mean when they refer to this or I don't know how this rule works. And you don't really have a way to ask that question. We all just kind of talk over some of this stuff as if everybody gets it. But maybe people don't. And this is something that started a little bit on this show, a little bit on my other podcast, occasionally in mailbags and that sort of thing. Every now and then, somebody would ask, you know, a question. And they'd always preface it with like an apology. Like, look, I'm really sorry, but I don't know what this means or can you please explain that? And I thought, you know what?

I love answering those questions because there's no way that somebody asked a question like that is the only person wondering. There's going to be other fans out there going, you know what? Yeah, I don't know that either. So that's what the idea here is I put the call out on Twitter and a few other places. and said, look, send me your dumb questions. Send me the question that you just, you know, you're almost embarrassed to ask, you know, and we'll answer them. And we got an enormous response.

There were just a ton. A lot of questions showed up more than once, proving the point that, you know, that there were, there were more than one person out there wondering about them. And some of them were very unique. And some of them were very simple. but we sort of put together a list and we're just going to work through them over the next couple of weeks.

Yeah, and like you said, look, there are no dumb question. I think sometimes in hockey we're a little bit guilty of being gatekeepers, right? Where if you don't understand the game on the same level as me, then you're, and the tone we want to strike with our audience here is we don't want to talk down to you.

We want to talk on the same level as you and just kind of explain to you, hey, this is why this rule is the way it is to the best of our knowledge and the best of our ability. And we're also open to getting some feedback from people if they feel like, hey, actually, I kind of feel like this might be a valid explanation or whatever. We love to hear from you. So like you said, we got a ton of questions here, Sean. Like a ton of them. Way more than we, even to do two episodes. If you sent one in

and you don't hear it, you know, my apologies, but I mean, we could do, boy, we can do a few months worth with all of the, all the ones we got. And when, you know, we may make this a recurring feature or do something within another format. So keep the questions coming in. Yeah, I almost feel like there, like, based on the number of questions we got, I almost feel like, you know, the ones we don't get to,

we just build a regular feature. Like, just hit hit into this idea every week of, hey, here's the one question, you know, whatever. Like, clearly this is an undermined, you know, utilized area here, that hockey. And I got to tell you, part of the reason I like this concept is, look, we want to be welcoming to new fans. You know, it is a tough sport sometimes to figure out when you're new to it and we're not always the most welcoming. But I got to say, my favorite questions were the ones that I got from people who would preface it by saying, like, I've been a fan for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, and I have never understood this.

You know, can you please explain it to me? I love that stuff. And so, yeah, hopefully there'll be something in here even for the old timers. Okay, so let's start. And like you said, there's a handful of questions where it came up repeatedly. In fact, one here. I'll read a couple of the questions. It's the same tone.

And the idea is, can somebody please explain how offsetting penalties work? I'll read a couple of them here. A couple of them here. Aaron writes in, how do referees decide if penalties are matching minors and if it's going to be five on five or four on four, I'm always confused. Anonymous writes in, please, please address the offsetting penalties things. I watch a ton of hockey. I'm still surprised how many times guys end up on the ice after a bunch of simultaneous calls.

And Andy says, I've just seen it so many times. It's five on five. I've also seen situations where I thought it would be five on five. And then it's four on four. Can you please explain how offsetting penalties work? So what do we got for the listeners here? This was one of the two questions that came up over and over and over again. And the good news is it's a relatively simple answer.

So before we get to that, the history here is, and if you've been a fan for a long time, this might add to the confusion, is that the NHL has changed the rules on this a few times. you know, it used to be that two guys got a minor. It was four on four. And then they changed it. And it's, you know, that's a change that's attributed sometimes to different teams, different powerhouse teams. The Montreal Canadians were too good or the Oilers were too good, too deadly at four on four. And so for a while it was always five on five.

And then they went back to what we have now, which is the concept of offsetting minor penalties. resulting in four on four. But it's confusing because it doesn't always happen. Or sometimes you see a situation, you think, okay, this is how it's going to play out. Let me first tell you that there is an entire big long section of the rulebook that handles all of the possible scenarios. Like, if you've ever wondered about a really obscure,

like what happens if this guy gets a double minor and his teammate gets a major and at the same time a guy on the other team gets a misconduct, conduct and a single minor, how does that play out? Every scenario is listed in the rulebook. And if you're having trouble sleeping and you want to go through that section, it's, it's all there. But as far as why is it sometimes four and four and why is it sometimes five and five? The simple answer is if there is a minor penalty called on each team and there are no other penalties currently on the board, that's the situation where you get four on four. So, you know, offsetting roughing minors, you know, at the opening face off, we will play four on four.

Anything else, those offsetting penalties do not change the number of players on the ice. So basically, the rule of thumb is if there's no other penalties on the board and you get two minors, one on each side, that gets you to four on four. Anything else, you will see the penalty still get called, of course, but they offset and they do not result then in. in teams being short-handed, teams having somebody off the ice. Any major penalties that are offsetting fighting never results in four-on-four. It always stays five-on-five. If there's already a minor on the board, you don't go from five-on-four-on-four to four-on-three, for example. If there was already one set of offsetting penalties and you're playing four-on-four,

another one doesn't bring you down to three-on-three. It's only the situation where those are the first two penalties, up on the board that you get to four on four. There you go. And I think that's, you know, the easiest way to describe it or explain offsetting penalties. Because you're right, though, like for sure. Like there's certainly certainly people would look up and see, oh, two guys just fought. Those are offsetting penalties, five minutes each. Why aren't we playing four? Would you, by the way, would you be in favor of that, for example, in a situation where there's offsetting fighting majors? Would you

like to see four and four for the full five minutes? You know, that might be fun. I kind of like anything that gets us more four-on-four. Wouldn't have worked so well back in the day. Back in the 80s and 90s, we would have been playing big chunks of the game with, I don't know if we would have seen five-on-five very much at all. But yeah, it's, yeah, I'd be open to that change. Okay. Yeah, I think I would be to it.

Like, like I said, anything to open up the game, make it a little bit better, you know, potentially create more space and offense. I'm on board for that. Now, I got another question that kind of follows along those lines. And I apologize if I mispronounce the name, Pranae, P-R-A-N-A-Y, Praneh, has written in with a question. And this kind of follows right up off of what we're talking about. And Praneh asks, one thing I've always been curious about,

what happens when five-minute major fighting penalties end? The broadcasts rarely show those players coming back onto the ice. And they certainly couldn't come out if the teams are playing five-on-five because that means each team would have six skaters aside. I've always been so confused by this. That is from Prane. Yeah, and it's a good point because this is another one of those things. We don't show it.

We just kind of assume that everybody knows. But yeah, any penalty like that does not change the number of guys on the eye. So offsetting majors, any offsetting minors in the situations we just described, anything like that, the player stays in the penalty box until the next stoppage, at which point they come out. And a lot of times, you know, that might be during a commercial break or something like that, which is why you don't see it, or they're too busy showing the replay of the last thing. They just kind of sneak off the ice and usually go right to the bench. But yeah, it is, it is. So you get a five-minute fighting major penalty and you get sent to the penalty box for five minutes.

You're actually going to be there longer than five minutes in almost every case because you're going to sit there until the next stoppage. And if that, you know, if there's five minutes of extra time on the other, then that's it. You just sit there. And that's also the reason, by the way, that you will sometimes see when a player gets a penalty, you know, especially if it's a major, if it's near the end of the period, sometimes you'll see them go straight to the dressing room. if they're offsetting and they know there's no way that the penalty is going to end before the end of the period, they don't have to go to the penalty box. They can just go and go straight to the dressing room, which is usually what they do. And again, if they went to our rule, which is, hey, what if we went four on four during a, after a fight?

Well, then those guys could come back on, right, when the penalty expires. Usually the only time you get to see them come out of the boxes if they've been chirping each other so much that it looks like there might be some action right on the way out. and sometimes the camera will follow them. But no, yeah, other than that, they just sneak on out and get back to the bench. The chirping inside the box is great. I'm just wondering, though, off top of your head, because I can't remember an instance, can you remember two guys getting into a fight, going to their respective penalty boxes, chirping each other, you know, kind of over the off-ice officials and, you know, threatening each other?

And then the second that they come out, they fight again? Have you seen that? I have seen that when it's two guys in the box for roughing. So it's the situation where it's four on four and they're coming out during the play. I have seen that where two guys chirp and they basically say as soon as we get out and they step right out of the penalty box and drop the gloves. You don't see it in the other situations because if you fight during a stoppage in play, that's automatic ejections and suspensions and everything come into it. That's also, by the way, why you see that ridiculous thing where guys wait until the puck is dropped and then. immediately drop their gloves, it's because they are waiting for the play to be on because

they get automatically ejected. If you get into a fight between stoppages, then that's, and that's because that was how some of these brawls used to start, and especially if it's during a line change, and you got extra guys on the ice, they don't want any of that. So no, you wouldn't see it for two guys getting in a full-on fight, fighting again right out of the the box, but sometimes you will see them, you know, they, they both go to their wings and and it's, it's round two as soon as the puck drops. You know, I didn't intend for this to be, like as I sort of curate all of the questions, so I didn't intend for this to be a penalty themed episode, but clearly there's a lot of

questions about penalties, be it fighting and offsetting penalties. Tell you what, I'll just get to keep the theme going here with some penalty questions. Nathaniel writes in, can you explain the instigator penalty a little bit more in detail? It always seems to me that it's quite arbitrary when the refs decide to hand one out or not hand one out after a fight. Is there something I'm missing when it comes to instigator penalties? That's from Nathaniel. Yeah, not necessarily. It is, it's very discretionary, and I would agree that it's fairly inconsistent how it gets handed out.

The one thing that I would say for the instigator penalty that some people miss, and I've heard announcers get tripped up on. this one is you cannot have an instigator penalty without fighting majors. There is, by definition, instigating has to be a fight. So sometimes you'll see, you know, a guy will come in and, you know, he'll be, he's the guy starting the trouble and it ends up with roughing miners and they say, oh, you know, should there have been an instigator, it's not possible to give an instigator penalty on something where it's roughing. Now, you could give him an extra two minutes, for sure. You can give him an extra roughing and refs will do that. But an instigator needs there to be a fight.

And other than that, it is really kind of the official's discretion. And they, you know, back in the day when the instigator was first introduced, there was a time where they were really calling it on most fights. I mean, whoever's gloves hit the ice first, even if it was by half a second, they were getting an extra two minutes as an instigator. you don't really see that anymore. These days it really has to be somebody jumping someone. Even when you see these fights that start after hits where a guy will throw, in a lot of cases, a clean hit, someone else comes across and challenges them.

And even though it's very obvious who's starting to fight there, generally speaking, as long as they both drop the gloves at the same time, roughly, then the officials don't really call the instigator. They don't seem to like to call the instigator. and so it's only as a last resort. So, yeah, it's inconsistent, but it can only ever be called when there is a fight. You know, as I look at it, and I'm using its website,

I see data, and they kind of keep track of penalties. Boy, I'm having a hard time. Like, I think if this data is correct, that there might have only been in the neighborhood of 15 instigating, calls in the last season of the, like in the 2021 season. I don't know. I'm trying to figure out if that means 2021, 22 or 2020,

but anyway, that gives you an idea that it's pretty rare to see the instigator penalty called. Yeah. It's, it really is rare. And look, I mean, that there's, this, this was a rule that came in in the, you know, late 80s, early 90s when there was a lot of fighting in the NHL. Every team had three enforcers. And that's not the league anymore.

I mean, fight. has dropped drastically. So you would expect the instigator drop to, and you could argue that the rule has done what it was intended to do, which has made it, you know, so that you don't get guys getting pulled into fights they don't want to be in. And so, you know, maybe it should be rare. But yeah, you really don't see it anymore unless it's a real obvious. And the other thing is a lot of times if somebody does jump somebody else, it doesn't turn into a fight. You know, they throw a few punches. The guy might turtle.

and then very often the official will just give one guy a major, give one guy a double minor, something like that. So, you know, you do still get the power play very often, but they don't seem to like to actually call an instigator penalty. Right. And it's, again, like I said, it seems to be very rare that they call that. All right, staying with that penalty theme, this is another one here. This is from Jason.

I've been watching hockey since the 1980s, and I realized something very recently. I have no idea how it's determined which player is sent to the penalty box when there's too many men on the ice penalty infraction or any bench minor. Is there a designated fall guy, whoever's in the coach's doghouse that week? Is the criteria the same for every team? I have so many questions. That's from Jason A.

And like you said, you love it when somebody who's been watching the game for decades, like Jason since the 80s, since the time you and I were watching the game, that still is unclear about something. So Jason's wondering, let's say a team gets too many men. And by the way, every team is convinced, every fan base is convinced that their team takes more too many men on the ice calls than any other team, right?

I'm right on that? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That's one of those universal. Yeah. Again. Oh, my God.

What are they going to get in? Another one, man. There was another one just four months ago, and we got another one. Yeah. Yeah. So how does that work? Jason wants to know.

Yeah. And he's pretty much guessed it right. It is completely the coach's discretion. So yeah, it usually is. It might be somebody who's in a doghouse. But this is one of those penalties there where it's the coach's discretion and it can be anybody. It doesn't even have to be one of the six guys on the ice. There are situations where the guy who serves a penalty has to be somebody who was on the ice at the time, but this is not one of them. It can be anyone. And typically what coaches will do is they will put a guy

in there who is not a penalty killer. You know, that's kind of your obvious criteria is somebody that you, you're not going to need to kill the penalty that you've just taken. It used to be that a lot of times they would put an offensive player in there, put a guy out there who didn't kill penalties, but like, you know, Phil Kessel was the classic guy that you weren't ever using him to kill penalties. But it, the view was that, you know what, if we get. when he comes out of the box, he can be a dangerous player.

And sometimes you'll see teams, they'll get a breakaway right out of the penalty box. And so you want an offensive player in there who could take advantage of that. It seems like there's been a little bit less of that. And I think part of the thinking there is you don't necessarily want a star player going in because you're committing and to be in there for two minutes. But if the other team takes a penalty and now you're playing four on four for 90 seconds or something, you don't have your best guy out there. And that is one element of it is you put a guy in the box.

Once he's in there, he has to serve the entire penalty. You can't swap it out. You can't go, okay, wait a second, we're back to four on four. We want Phil back out for this. Once the guy goes in, he does go win. One other interesting thing that I'll just throw out there that a lot of fans don't know, you don't actually have to put a guy in the box. You're going to play short-handed, but you don't need to put somebody in the penalty box

if you don't want to. You could decline to put someone in there. For example, let's say you take a five-minute major. Somebody takes five-minute major. They get kicked out of the game. You need somebody to serve that penalty. Well, you actually don't have to put somebody in the box for the whole time. However, if you don't have somebody in the box when that penalty ends,

there's nobody to come out of the penalty box. And then you're screwed. And you can't have the guy jump off the bench or anything like that. And that has happened a very small handful of times where teams have, for example, not put a guy in the penalty box to start a major. You don't want to have a guy go and sit there for five minutes. But then the play continues and it continues. They don't get a chance to put them in.

And then they end up having to serve a much extra penalty time because there's nobody to come out of the box. I'm pretty sure I remember that happened into the Leaves. I think it's happened a few other teams. But yeah, you don't actually have to put a guy. You could say, no, you know what? We'll wait. We'll do it later in the penalty. But if you gamble and lose, you can end up killing more than a two-minute penalty.

All right, a couple of quick follow-ups on that. Too many men on the ice thing. First of all, do you remember years ago, and I don't remember who the penguins were playing? All I remember is that Gary Roberts was the guy serving the penalty. And he's in the penalty box. And it must have been Fox Sports at the time was like the Penguins local broadcaster. And Roberts is in the penalty box serving the too many.

met on the ice call. And the screen on the TV says, Gary Roberts, two minutes, and it says, too much man. Too much man. Yeah. Do you remember that? Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. remember it. And one of the funniest things. And I don't know what, you know, I, I guess somebody just, typed it in wrong. Maybe it feels like one of those, like a Google translate for too many men. But the fact that it was Gary Roberts was just, you know, so, so funny. And I'm sure every senator's fan was watching that going, yeah, that's accurate. That's about right. He's too much man for us.

And the other part I have on the, you know, too many men and you said, hey, look, it's the coach's decision. He can pick any of the skaters on his team. You know what would be a fun plot twist? What if the other team gets to choose who goes in the penalty box for you? That'd be fun. I know it's probably too much like the XFL. Like that would be like the XFL rule that they would have.

But wouldn't that be fun? That would be all right. You would take the other team's best penalty killing defensemen. wouldn't you? Like that would probably be the probably, yeah. Or, you know, if there was, you know, like a Patrice Berser on Selky level guy, you might get him too. But yeah, no,

that would be a good one too. Yeah, no, I'd love to see that. All right. Moving along, again, we have more kind of penalty-related stuff. This one's from Kevin. Kevin wants to know what distinguishes a delayed penalty from a normal penalty. Do certain kinds of penalties

qualified to be called delayed? And what is to stop an official from just simply stopping the play, blowing the whistle, the moment an infraction occurs. That's from Kevin Y, wanting to know about delayed penalties and blowing the whistle right away. Yeah. So it is, it's based on possession. Basically, if my team commits a penalty, they will not blow the whistle until my team possesses the puck. Now, so that's why, you know, very often you will see it blown dead right away.

my team has the puck, whistle blows because we've committed a penalty. But the thinking is that if the other team has possession, you don't want to penalize, you know, they haven't done anything wrong. So they shouldn't lose their possession. They could be in the middle of a scoring chance, especially in the defensive zone. You know, imagine if, you know, cross-checking a guy in front of your goalie immediately ended the play even if the other team was throwing it around. That would be unfair and would probably incentivize some bad behavior.

So the way it works is if the team that does not have possession of the puck commits a penalty, the arm goes up, but that's the delayed penalty situation. And from there, it comes down to the other team has to not touch the puck. Simply having the puck deflect off a skate or something is not going to blow the play dead. They have to have possession. Now, your next question is going to be, okay, Sean, explain possession? I can't. because it's not actually in the rulebook.

The rules are very vague on what actually is possession. But the way that this typically works is the team has to do something intentionally with the puck. Get a stick on it and move it, shoot it, do something like that. But just having it's not about, you know, oh, the puck touched him or, you know, the puck ticked off his stick. That's not enough. But any sort of intentional possession will result in a whistleblowing. and that's why teams can pull their goaltender, get the extra attacker in those situations

because they know the other team is not going to have the opportunity to shoot the puck towards their net. So the risk is very, very low. So they sneak the extra player on. You know, if a team scores on a delayed penalty, I think you should still get the power play. Like, I've never understood that.

Like, I don't understand why they just wipe the penalty off the minor penalty off the map. Like, the guy got high-sticked or the guy got cross-checked. Or like that, I don't understand why that gets taken away. Like, to me, you're not getting a power play. You're pulling your goalie, so you're,

it's not really a power play. You're still having six players on the ice. I'd like to see that amended, to be honest with you. Yeah, and that one, that comes up from time to time. People will either ask about that or suggest that that be changed. For the reason you just, you just described.

argument in favor of doing it, which is, you know, you haven't had a power play. You pulled your goalie, but you didn't have a power play. And so why negated the penalty? The counter to that would be that when we give a penalty, when we give a minor penalty, we know when a team scores on a minor penalty that the rest of the penalties negated. Basically, a minor penalty is meant to give the team a chance to score one goal. You know, if that's your make good, you're getting a shot at one goal and that if we allowed a team score on the delay penalty and then get the penalty and the score again, well, you know, now you're given two goals for one minor infraction. That's the thinking behind not doing it.

But yeah, you absolutely could amend that rule and for the reason you described. A couple of other real penalty questions. And I'll be honest, this one here is one that I've often thought of and would love an answer to. Dave writes in and says, when referees call an embellishment penalty, why do they always also call the penalty that the embellisher was trying to draw? By calling the embellishment, doesn't that mean by definition there wasn't really a penalty, just somebody trying to draw one? It never makes sense to me. That's from Dave.

I got to agree with Dave. Like so many times you see it, right? You're like, man, that guy dove. And then all of a sudden the referee's like, all right, you're both going off. You for tripping, you for embellishing. or diving, however you want to phrase it. And it almost seems counterintuitive. It's like, if you dove, doesn't that mean there wasn't a penalty?

So what's our best way of explaining this one? So the way the rule is, keep in mind, the rule is embellishment. It's not, the rule is not faking or something like that. It's embellishment. So in theory, you could absolutely have a legitimate penalty committed and have the person on the receiving end embellish that penalty. You know, like you could, you could have a cross check to the back that is a penalty and should be called.

And also the guy throws himself down on the ice, you know, the hands go up in the air, anything like that. And, you know, by the same token, a slash pretty much anything, with the exception, maybe a trip. You could argue that, hey, I mean, you're tripped or you're not. But any penalty and then the explanation from a referee would be, hey, I saw the original penalty I was going to call it, but then he embellished, so I had to get him to. Now, that's why, you know, that makes sense for why you will sometimes see that. Does it explain why it almost

always gets called that way? No. Not at all. And look, the honest answer, let's be real here, they're doing it because the refs are just intentionally evening it up, because they are, the one tough thing about embellishment is every now and then you get a guy who didn't really. embellish. And now, boy, if you, you know, you really look like a fool if you get the one guy when you should have got the other one. So they kind of even it up. And that way, they're still punishing the guy for the embellishment, but they're not, they're not punishing quite as much. I don't like it. I think that if I was director of officiating, I'd go to my officials and say, hey, we expect to see the offsetting embellishment sometimes, but not very often. You should be calling

one or the other. But they don't do it very much. And the other thing that that drives me crazy is sometimes you'll see, you know, you see the first foul. You see the cross check. And you look and you see the ref's arm is not up. But then the guy goes and sells it. And suddenly now he's calling both of them. And now you're going, hey, you weren't going to call that first penalty. You know, you didn't have your arm up.

That wasn't going to be a call. You're just calling the guy because he embellished. And you don't want to give the guy just two minutes on his own. I absolutely, you know, it makes sense. Every now and then you see people say embellishment should automatically negate whatever the penalty was. Well, let's not go crazy on that. I do think there should be scenarios where you can get both. But it certainly shouldn't be, you know, it feels like it's 90% of the time.

And that's there's no good reason to do it that way. You know, with diving and embellishing, maybe you can refresh my memory and tell me if this actually happened or if it was just an idea. It was probably, I know it was after the lockout. So it was somewhere maybe around 2010, 2011, 12. But do you remember there was a movement at one point from like some players and coaches that they wanted a list of divers slash embellishers to be posted inside the locker room of every team that like if you got nailed for embellishing more than once? Your name was going to be like on a list. Yep. And they're going to circulate that.

But did they ever follow through with that? I think they did. Yeah. No, I think that list was out there. And I don't remember that. I remember them talking about it. Because I remember players being mad about it. You know, like Brian McCabe would, you know, be all mad one day.

I just, my name was on the list. And, you know, of course, nobody ever thinks they embellished. You know, nobody ever thinks they dive. Nobody thinks anyone on their team dives. That's part of what makes it such a tricky penalty to call. But yeah, there was kind of a name and shame movement. And we still have a remnant of that because there are fines. But the fines only kick in like after the, after the first.

one. So you get, you know, you can get a warning that is kept private, but then when you see somebody get fined for, for diving, that means that it's, they've done it multiple times and been nailed by the league for it. And I'm all for that, by the way. Like, absolutely, I, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, and people fake. And, you know, and I, and I hate when people defend it. Every now and then you see somebody do it and they'll go, oh, that's good gamesmanship. That's a veteran move by that guy to sell it. And I can't stand it. And I absolutely am all in favor.

Another thing, when I'm the director of officiating, I'm going to tell my referees, you guys talk to each other about who the divers and fakers are. And you go ahead and call the games based on, you know, if you know this guy's a faker, if it's a 50-50 call, don't call it. Let him, you know what, half these guys are diving, you know, in a 5-1 game with four minutes left and they're trying to call it. Okay, good. you got your two minutes, you embarrass the referee, maybe you're not going to get the next one. I have no problem at all of that. People would say that's the refs being addictive or whatever.

I would absolutely encourage them to do it because I can't stand when I see guys get away with that. It's funny because when you think of embellishment, the number one thing you think of is a guy, maybe skating through the neutral zone, a defenseman or a defensive player kind of has to stick out and he dives, right? You know the one that is sneaky,

probably almost as often happens almost as often? is a guy whipping his head back on a high stick. Yep. I'm a least fan. You don't have to tell me about the, we got burned on that in the Tampa series, right? Absolutely. Yeah.

That's the one. Yeah. And it works up because, I mean, geez, it's so, and it puts the referee in such a terrible situation. I mean, we all complain about the refs all the time. We give him such a hard time.

That's an awful situation when everybody sees the head snap back. And now you got to sit there and go, you know, geez, if I don't call it, you know, if he did get hit and I'm not calling it, boy, I'm going to, I'm going to look terrible. No, I can't stand it. And I absolutely would. And some of it is, it can't be the ref calling every single one of them because, I mean, you're doing it to fool the ref.

It's the league stepping in and hitting these guys with fines. And I'd like to see the fines be bigger and I'd like to see it be a public list and let's show us the exact moment and let's all. point and laugh at this guy and, you know, look at him faking it like that. And, you know, again, everybody's always innocent, right? They'd say, well, no, no, it's, I saw him, you know, his stick was coming towards me. So I flinched back to, you know, to avoid it. That's, that's what it was. No, it's not.

And I'll give you one more good tip, by the way. This is, you know, for newer fans or if you were ever kind of wondering, like, how, you know, how can you tell if somebody is diving or if they're legitimate? Somebody told me this once and it really changed how I watched this stuff. Watch their hands. watch the hands on their way down. When somebody is unexpectedly knocked down, so when you're legitimately tripped, knocked down,

your instinct, you can't control. It's not something you do on purpose, but your instinct is your hands go down to break your fall. When you know you're going to fall, when you're, you know, you're faking it, the hands go up because you're selling it. You're trying to make yourself big and you're trying to make it look dramatic.

If you see the hands go up, it's almost always a dive. You see the hands go down to break the fall very often. and it's, it's legitimate. There you go. That's a good tip. I never, I've never heard that one,

but that totally makes sense. This is part of my, this is part, one of my, my sneaky rules I want to get in there is I just want to make it illegal for any player to raise their hand above their, to raise their hand for anything. Because the only time people's hands go up, you know,

without a stick in it, it's, uh, diving. It's trying to call a penalty or, you know, or offset or when the, when the puck gets shot out and everybody starts waving their hand around, oh, rough, rough.

make that all a penalty. I would love to see, you know, you just get all of them. Yeah, they shot the puck in, but you guys just picked up five minors because your entire, everybody on the ice, I'll try to call the penalty for me. Yeah. That's right. Listen, let's wrap up this episode of the podcast, again, where we're taking your questions on, you know, kind of silly questions or questions that you were kind of afraid to ask.

Ended up doing an entire penalty theme here. And we got one more from Kevin. Kevin wants to know, why is the penalty for, for goalie interference never applied. After a goal is waved off or even overturned on video review for, wait for it, goalie interference. That's from Kevin. So what's Kevin saying is,

let's say Chicago scores a goal against Minnesota. And it's Patrick Kane, and it turns out when they go to video review, they realize, ah, you know what, Patrick Kane was in the blue paint, and he kind of bumped Mark Andre Fleury. Guess what? Upon further review,

It's no goal. Kevin's question is, why isn't Patrick Kane nailed then two minutes for goalie interference? Why do we never see that apply? Fantastic question. Fantastic question by Kevin. This absolutely has to be confusing a lot of people because we have a penalty in the rulebook for goaltender interference. And yet, when you see a goal waved off and they say no goal because of goaltender interference and you're like, well, where's the penalty then? And this is a nice one because there is a similar. answer. And the simple answer is that goaltender interference, the penalty is only for intentional interference with the goaltender. It is any kind of incidental contact, anything

like that should never be a minor penalty, whereas incidental contact can negate a goal. Basically, if you accidentally bump a goalie, any goal that's scored is not going to count, but other than that, you keep playing. So the reason that you all, almost never see the penalty called when the goal is negated is simply that they are saying it was incidental, unintentional contact that resulted in the goal being scored. So we take the goal off the board, but we don't put anyone in the penalty box unless we believe it was intentional interference, in which case, that's two minutes right there. Excellent. Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question because you see it all the time.

Like all the time. Golly interference is it really is two different things with the same name, which is very confusing. But goaltender interference, a minor penalty has to be intentional. Goaltender interference accidental can take a goal off the board, but it doesn't get you the two minutes. Well, I'll tell you what, like I said, we got two weeks worth of questions. So we figured we'd handle all the penalty related questions in this Thursday's episode. next week, boy, we got a whole bunch of questions that have less to do with penalties, more to do, you know, some kind of cap-related questions, roster-related questions, you know, left-handed, right-handed stuff, like a whole bunch of things. So we're going to get to those next week, and we just want to thank everybody for submitting their question.

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