The Professional Women’s Hockey League will make changes to certain regulations and impose more severe punishments for certain illegal actions during its second campaign of existence.
LPHF officials made these changes to the rule book less than two weeks before the start of the regular season, scheduled for November 30.
Last year, the LPHF innovated by establishing a regulation ensuring that a goal scored shorthanded automatically ended the penalty in progress.
This year, a new rule will force the players of a team that receives an infraction, which leads to penalty time displayed on the scoreboard, to remain on the ice until after the throw-in restarting the action.
In a press release, the league explains that this constraint could lead to a situation where the punished team will find itself with three attackers and a defender until it is possible to make a change.
Furthermore, a penalty for delaying the game will be imposed on the team which, voluntarily, sends too many players on the ice to force an interruption and create confusion as to which players must remain on the ice as part of the implementation of the new regulation.
Also, a major penalty and a game misconduct will be the default sanctions in the case of an illegal head check, unless the officials judge, after review, that the contact was accidental or that the head was not the main point of contact.
The penalty for heading will become a major infraction and will be accompanied by a game misconduct. Identical sanctions will be imposed on a player who grabs the strap of the protective helmet, face protector or neck guard, or pulls the hair of a rival.
A team may request a video review if it is punished for delaying the game after sending the puck into the stands. An additional punishment will be imposed if the team loses its challenge.
“We are always looking to make the sport safer for our players and more entertaining for our fans,” said Jayna Hefford, senior vice president of hockey operations, in the league press release.
“We believe that these innovations allow us to move forward towards achieving these two objectives,” she added.
The six teams on the circuit, which began training sessions last week, will be brought together in Montreal and Toronto for integrated camps with three clubs in each of the two cities for three days, starting on Wednesday.
In Montreal, the Victoire will share the ice rink at the Verdun Auditorium with the Ottawa Charge and the Boston Fleet.
Montreal and Boston will play a preseason game Wednesday afternoon at 2 p.m. Montreal and Ottawa will face each other on Friday, at the same time. On Thursday, Boston and Ottawa will do battle, also at 2 p.m.
All these games will be played behind closed doors on the ice of the Espace Denis-Savard.
The LPHF also specified certain important dates. Thus, March 2 will be the cut-off day for making transactions and from March 3, no changes can be made to the formations.
The regular schedule will end on May 3 and the playoffs will begin on May 6.
