Unlimited high-sticking: women's hockey creates excitement with experiment (again)
The WCHA is embracing the mentality of its professional counterpart. Tipping the scales in favor of excitement is a continuing trend in women’s hockey.
An experimental rule change might have things looking a bit different in women’s college hockey this winter.
In conference games only, the WCHA will pilot a rule change allowing more creative means of playing, passing, and (perhaps most importantly) scoring the puck. The restrictions on using a stick to hit the puck above the crossbar when scoring a goal or above a player’s shoulders are eliminated. Skaters are free to knock the puck out of the air anywhere above the 200-by-90(ish)-foot sheet of ice (aside from on shootout and penalty shot attempts).
“We’re wanting more scoring in hockey,” Minnesota Golden Gophers head coach Brad Frost said at WCHA Media Day. “This is an opportunity to have that.”
Coaches and players in the conference are balancing the desire to generate more offense and rewarding what several called “skill” play against the risk of injury. Tipping the scales in favor of excitement is a continuing trend in women’s hockey.
WCHA coaches and players ‘really excited’ about rule change
Hitting a three-inch in diameter slab of vulcanized rubber (also known as a hockey puck) with a thin rod of carbon fiber (hockey stick) is difficult enough when stationary. Doing it while that rubber is falling out of the air is even more difficult. So why not reward that act?
Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Nadine Muzerall said she’s “kind of in the middle” on the change, but understands the case for it.
“Brad Frost was big on that,” Muzerral noted, acknowledging the arguments made by the head coach she served as an assistant under for five seasons. “With the hand-eye coordination, the ability for an athlete to do that. It is a skill set.”
The two-time national champion at Ohio State also took a note out of the playbook of one of her two-sport athletes.
“I just watched Makenna Webster playing field hockey for three years and they were able to bring that really hard ball down with a very big club, with no helmet on,” said Muzerall, reflecting on Webster’s ice and field hockey experience with the Buckeyes. “So I think we’ll be able to be safe in that environment.”
That concern, safety, is one that WCHA coaches and players admitted was one potentially at odds with the desire for more dynamic playmaking. All agreed, like Muzerall, the pilot rule could be adopted safely.
“I know that the concerns are that it could potentially bring more injuries,” Frost said. “I don’t see that happening. I guess we’ll find out this year. I don’t envision–we’re not going to be teaching our players to swing their sticks, you know, like lacrosse sticks and those types of things.”
The four-time national champion head coach of the Gophers also emphasized that minor and major penalties remained in place when players strike an opponent with a stick above the shoulders.
St. Cloud State Huskies defender Grace Wolfe was more concerned with taking away additional scoring chances than anything else.
“Just being more conscious of where the player’s stick is and making sure they don’t have a line to where they can tip that,” the Huskies captain said was her chief concern. “I think it’s just a little bit part of the game, but it won’t be anything major because we should be taking care of the in front of the net anyways.”
Limiting high-sticking reviews makes the most sense given camera-angle limitations
For better or for worse, most college hockey programs do not have the technological capabilities to accurately adjudicate the inches separating a legal play of the puck from an infraction. Anyone who has watched WCHA hockey in recent years has lamented the camera angles inside Ohio State University Ice Rink. Those inside Wisconsin’s LaBahn Arena are not miles better.
So, why ask officials to use imperfect technology to make perfect rulings?
“Maybe most important for me is, it seems like anytime there’s a potential high-stick goal, the referee will either call it a goal or wave it off and they have an eighth of a second to make that decision,” Frost said.
“Even if they go back to review, it’s still really hard to decipher whether that was a high stick or not,” Frost added. “Because the angles of the cameras. Because everything happens so quickly. Because of the quality of the cameras, and that’s obviously at the division one women’s hockey level, but even as you go to men’s hockey, where maybe they have better angles in the NHL or collegiate hockey, it’s still really hard to tell.
“And so this takes the onus off the referees to–it’s a good goal regardless of where the stick is, is it above the crossbar or not, it doesn’t matter because it’s a skill play.”
Perhaps this specific goal is not what Frost had in mind to make his point, but it is a perfect example of encouraging that “skill play” and not putting too much on officials.
From the archives of a Snapchat taken of a replay from a laptop screen of a goal. In 2017, Minnesota-Duluth's Laura Stalder's goal in the 2OT of the WCHA Final Faceoff semifinals was subject to a lengthy review. A review that likely dampened some of the excitement from the Bulldogs' dramatic win over the Gophers in Minneapolis.
For what it is worth, Stalder said she “was 150% sure [the puck] was below the crossbar.” So, maybe a review was unnecessary.
WCHA following in the footsteps of its professional counterpart
If there is anything the PWHL is doing right, it is embracing its need to be different. It is still hockey, no doubt about it. Goals, faceoffs, and offsides, all the basic tenets of the game, are the same. It is still hockey, and it is embracing its need to be something different than simply another professional hockey league.
A previous version of this publication featured a column titled, “Some Leagues are No Fun; others are historic.” That column celebrated the fact that before the Professional Women’s Hockey League ever took the ice, it embraced its need to be different by locking its players into a sense of security with a collective bargaining agreement. That CBA was something of a necessity given the upheaval the PWHL inflicted on professional women’s hockey in North America.
The PWHL, under unique circumstances, became the first professional sports league to begin operations with a ratified collective bargaining unit. To its credit, the PWHL continues to embrace its Day 1 entrepreneurial spirit.
From the league’s “Gold Plan” to discourage tanking, to the “jailbreak” rewarding teams with its skater back for scoring shorthanded, the PWHL has consistently shown it understands the need to be a distinct product without radically altering the game.
Unlimited high-sticking is unlikely to fundamentally change hockey, but it demonstrates the WCHA's understanding of the PWHL's lessons and the need to differentiate itself from other college hockey conferences.