Hockey rules you’ve probably been wondering about: Penalty edition

If you started watching hockey for the first time this week, you might be wondering about certain rules that have come up. Here are some quick explanations.
This is the first article in a multi-part series of hockey explanations. If you have a hockey question, post it in the replies on the X thread below.
Let’s start with penalties. As you may have noticed, when a player does something illegal, he sits in the penalty box for a prescribed amount of time which corresponds to the crime. His team then plays with one less player.
There are three types of penalties: minors, majors and misconducts. Each is worth a different amount of time.
Minor penalties: These are worth two minutes and are given for small infractions. When the opposing team scores while you have a minor penalty, the penalty ends.
They are given for small, relatively harmless infractions such as hooking, tripping, slashing, too many men, etc.
Major penalties: These are worth five minutes and are given for more serious misdeeds. The opposing team can score an infinite number of times and the player stays in the box.
Fighting warrants a major penalty, but because both teams typically get them at the same time, they cancel each other out and the teams continue playing with five players each.
Major penalties outside of fighting are not very common in the NHL, but when they are given, it’s usually for something serious. You might occasionally see them for hits to the head or hits using the knee or elbow.
Also note that almost every minor penalty can be upgraded to a major at the referees’ discretion, but it rarely happens.
If you watch international hockey, such as the Olympics, the World Championship or the World Junior Championship, you’ll notice that there are major penalties in almost every game. That’s because the International Ice Hockey Federation has different rules than the NHL.
Misconducts: These can be worth either 10 minutes or the rest of the game, but the range of severity required to earn one varies significantly.
A 10-minute misconduct does not penalize the team — It just removes the particular player from the ice for the duration of the penalty. For this reason, they usually result from the referees trying to calm down heated situations
For example, if a referee perceives that a particular player is trying to stir up trouble, he might assess that player a 10-minute misconduct to not have to deal with him. It’s quite common in the last 10 minutes of games because the referees can get rid of that particular player.
Game misconducts, on the other hand, kick the player out of the game for good. They often result in supplemental discipline (a fancy phrase for suspensions and fines).
Game misconducts are seldom given in the NHL, but when they are, you know the player did something bad.
Match penalties: The most severe punishment a player can receive in a game is a match penalty. They are given to players who, as judged by the referees, deliberately attempt to injure opponents. Each one is automatically accompanied by a five-minute major penalty and the offending player can’t return to that game.
Every match penalty is automatically reviewed by the officials to make sure that they saw it right. Upon review, the officials have the option to keep the penalty as is or change it to a lesser penalty.
Match penalties are seldom assessed in the NHL because it’s often hard to determine intent to injure.
Double-minors: You may notice that, from time to time, teams receive four-minute penalties (such as the one Ian Cole got against the New York Islanders on Thursday). These are called double-minors and, as the name suggests, are just consecutive two-minute minors.
They result from high-sticking penalties that cause injuries — most commonly blood. If the high stick doesn’t cause an injury, it’s a normal, two-minute minor.
If the opposing team scores during the first two minutes of a double-minor, the first penalty ends and the second one starts. If the opposing team scores during the third or fourth minute of the penalty, the penalty ends.
Delayed penalties: Why doesn’t the referee blow the whistle immediately after the penalty happens? In order to not break up potential offensive opportunities for the team on the receiving end of the infractions, the guilty team has to gain possession of the puck before the play ends.
For this reason, teams typically pull the goalie during delayed penalties. If the other team can’t touch the puck, they can’t score. Well, unless you do what the Utah Hockey Club did in its first preseason game.
Coincidental penalties: If both teams receive major penalties at the same time, they cancel each other out and the teams play five on five. These are classified as coincidental penalties.
Coincidental minor penalties in the NHL result in four-on-four play. However, if the teams are already playing four on four, another set of coincidental penalties do cancel each other out. They only play three-on-three in overtime.
Maximum number of concurrent penalties: Teams will never play with less than three players on the ice. So, if one team has three concurrent penalties, the third penalty doesn’t start until the first one ends.
Not every penalty is self-explanatory, so let’s go over some of the more complicated ones.
For explanations on some of the simpler penalties in hockey, see this Deseret News article.
Contrary to popular belief, fighting is not allowed in hockey. As explained above, those who do it receive five-minute major penalties at the minimum. However, both teams typically get the same penalties after fights, so neither team gains an advantage.
That being said, there are two factors that can put one team at a disadvantage.
The first is an instigator penalty. It happens when one player starts the fight and the other merely follows. It’s a two-minute minor penalty.
In other cases, you might see one or more players get game misconducts for joining the fight or starting an additional fight while one is already going. This happened in Utah HC’s game against the New York Rangers on Saturday when Jack McBain and Adam Edström dropped the gloves during another fight.
I asked the X community this week for hockey rules that they didn’t understand. The most common answer I got was goaltender interference. Let’s try to clear it up.
The first thing you have to understand is the goalie’s crease. It’s that little “D”-shaped area of blue paint at the base of each net, and it’s meant to be the goalie’s protected area. If an attacking player touches the goalie in the crease and then the puck goes in the net, chances are that the goal will not count (unless the player was pushed into the crease, in which case the goal does count).
This is what happened with the Rangers’ disallowed goal against Utah HC on Saturday. Rangers forward Matt Rempe was in the crease and made contact with Utah goalie Connor Ingram. The referee immediately waved the goal off for goalie interference, and video review confirmed it.
Several other teams have had similar disallowed goals both this season and last season, leading many people to express confusion as to what really counts as goalie interference.
The truth is that the NHL is going through a bit of a reform in what it calls goalie interference. The standards have changed throughout the years: Before the 2005 NHL lockout, a player’s feet couldn’t even be touching the goalie’s crease (that’s why Buffalo Sabres are so mad at the Dallas Stars’ Stanley Cup-winning goal in 1999).
For the majority of the time since 2005, the NHL hasn’t called things goalie interference unless the attacker’s contact with the goalie actually prevented him from making the save. That standard seems to have changed now, though no official rule change has occurred.
Goaltender interference can also result in a penalty, which also happened in Utah HC’s game against the Rangers. This occurs when, regardless of whether a goal is scored or not, a player make excessive contact with the goalie. You can’t bodycheck a goalie. If you do, you’ll get a penalty for goalie interference.
There are four scenarios in which a team can get a delay of game penalty.
The first is the most obvious: If a player does something that intentionally delays play from resuming, he may get a delay of game penalty. This is very uncommon, but you might see it once or twice a year, such as when Boston Bruins forward Brad Marchand intentionally shot the puck over the glass against the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday.
The next one is more commonly known as “puck over glass,” though it’s technically classified as delay of game. This is when a player shoots the puck directly over the glass from his defensive zone. In today’s game, it does not have to be intentional, though the rule was different a long time ago.
If the puck either touches the glass on its way out or lands in the bench, there is no penalty.
Delay of game can also be called when a goalie touches the puck below the goal line, outside the trapezoid behind the net. It’s a strange rule, but the general idea behind it is that if the goalie can play the puck from anywhere behind the net, it results in less in-zone play because he can get the puck out faster.
This is not a rule in European hockey, so you’ll occasionally see European goalies get these penalties when they first cross the pond.
Lastly, a team can get a delay of game penalty if two consecutive players get thrown out of the faceoff circle. A player gets kicked out of the faceoff circle when he either makes his move too early to win the faceoff or disobeys the linesman’s orders on where to put his stick.
Players get kicked out of probably half of all NHL faceoffs, but because of the delay of game penalty, the second player gets a bit more leeway when taking the draw.
No, “too many men” is not a woke social commentary. It just means that a team has too many players on the ice.
Each team is allowed six players — typically five skaters and a goalie. Occasionally, though, players communicate their line changes poorly, resulting in seven or more players on the ice. This gives the team a two-minute minor penalty for too many men.
Too many men is categorized as a “bench minor,” which means the penalty gets credited to the team as a whole, rather than a specific guilty player. The coach of the offending team chooses who, of the players that were on the ice at the time, sits in the penalty box to serve the penalty.
You may notice that during line changes, teams occasionally have seven, eight, sometimes even nine or 10 players on the ice at once. An oncoming player is allowed to leave the bench when the player coming off is within five feet of the bench, provided neither player makes an impact on the play before the line change is completed.
You can only hit a player who has the puck. If you either hit or impede the path of a player who does not have the puck, you’ll get an interference penalty.
A player who just barely released the puck may still be hit, but that window is very small. The rulebook does not specify an exact number of seconds that the window stays open, but as a rule of thumb, if the player’s follow through is still up, he’s probably still eligible to be hit.
Simply put, you can’t use the boards as a weapon. What does that mean? It means if your opponent is in an especially vulnerable position along the boards, he is off-limits.
Sometimes, the determining factor is the player’s distance from the boards. If he’s in a certain spot, hitting him could cause his head to hit the glass, rather than his back or shoulder.
Other times, it’s the player’s posture. If he’s crouched down, kneeling or in some other vulnerable position, hitting him can be dangerous.
Roughing is kind of a blanket penalty. If a player does something that he shouldn’t do, but it doesn’t necessarily fit into a particular category, he might get a roughing penalty.
Perhaps the most common situation in which you’ll see roughing penalties is when players participate in scrums after the whistle. The referees will often assess roughing penalties to one player on each team in an attempt to cool the situation off.