It's Official

My Pythagorean numbers show Americans aren't too bright when it comes to hockey. At least not the genius who thought up the latest offside twist.

But Bob MacKenzie loves it. At least until somebody points out it's a bad idea. In which case he won't like it. One man, two opinions.

This season the USHL introduced a hybrid form of no-touch icing. It works likes this:

On any potential icing, the linesman has to make a decision by the time the first player or players are crossing an imaginary line that runs across the rink and right through the end-zone faceoff dots and hash marks, or around 25 feet from the end boards.

If the defending player is the first to hit the dots or hash marks, the linesman immediately blows the whistle for automatic no-touch icing. The player does not have to even retrieve the puck.

If the defending player and the attacking player are in a dead heat or a little too close to call, the linesman blows the whistle for icing. The two players on a collision course can immediately let up for the automatic icing.

If, however, the attacking player has any degree of advantage on the defending player, the linesman doesn't blow the whistle and allows the puck chase and potential battle to continue. Linesmen are encouraged to use good judgment. In other words, if a defender is at the dot but totally flat-footed and the attacker is in full stride ready to blow by him, the defender shouldn't necessarily get the benefit of the doubt. Play on.

I've got an even better idea.

When the puck is fired down the ice by the defending team, if the closest player to the opposition goalie is a teammate of the icing team, the play is whistled down. Let's call it, oh, I don't know, "soccer icing", or "cherry-picking icing."

If the closest player to the opposition goaltender is a teammate of the goaltender, the teammate gets to retrieve the puck and skate it back out past the centre ice red line without fear of, to use an excellent ex-jock colour analyst-type non-word, "molestation" by his opponents. Let's call it "road hockey icing."

Even better, if the icing team did a "raisies" the play is whistled down as long as the opposition coach yells out, "no raisies" at the ref before the puck crosses an imaginary line between Bob McKenzie's protuding gut and Pierre Maguire's mouth. We'll call that "loose marbles icing."

Or finer still, if the puck caromes off the boards, crosses the opposition blue line in mid-air, completes a double-axle reverse, and lands on its side before coming to rest in the trapezoid, the icing team is assessed a five-minute major for witchcraft. Let's call that "Goody Osbourne icing."

Gretzky's idea, apparently, is to allow the defending team to fire the puck down the ice with impunity as long as it has crossed its own blue line. Let's call that, "the last time we listened to this guy we moved the net 17 feet from the boards so he could put a desk and chairs back there, icing."