In Youth Hockey, the Penalty Box is Getting Crowded

Tuesday, October 17, 2006 by Reed Albergotti, The Wall Street Journal

Bernice and Joe Collins have been among the most loyal fans of their grandson, Jerry Brock Jr., in his youth-hockey league in Brighton, Mich. But this fall, they are boycotting his games. His team spends so much time in the penalty box that his grandparents say it's pointless to attend.

When the National Hockey League revamped its rules and policies last year, the idea was to speed up play and make games more exciting for fans. But in the nation's youth leagues, enforcing the rules has actually slowed things down and landed many more kids in the penalty box. In trying to mimic the NHL, USA Hockey, the organization that oversees amateur hockey for 370,000 players from ages six to 17, has run into an epidemic of players cooling their skates for holding, hooking and other infractions.

In some leagues, games are seeing four times the number of penalties typically called last season. The result, in many places, is frustrated players, irate parents and coaches getting booted from games.

On the first day of this year's Jr. Sharks Labor Day Kickoff Tournament in San Jose, Calif., which draws elite teams from as far away as Alaska and Texas, more than a dozen coaches had to sit out a game because their teams netted too many penalties. Games were punctuated by parents yelling obscenities from the stands.

It isn't that teams have gotten more thuggish. Instead, referees are being asked to blow the whistle on tactics that have long been an accepted -- indeed, encouraged -- part of the game, from lightly grabbing players to slow them down to snagging them with the end of a hockey stick to get better positioning. The idea is to signal teams that even minor transgressions won't be tolerated -- and have players spend more time skating and shooting and less time grappling with one another.

In NHL hockey, the moves were hailed as a big success. But in youth hockey, getting referees to apply the policies consistently has been a big challenge. Before the NHL adopted its new rules, refs had to attend a weeklong minicamp, where they not only studied the changes in classrooms but practiced them repeatedly during live play.

But training the 27,000 USA Hockey referees is a much bigger challenge, and some say the one-day course to review the new policies wasn't enough. On top of that, it's taking the kids longer to get used to the new environment and adjust their game to avoid penalty calls. USA Hockey's new dictates also apply to the tens of thousands of adults who play in amateur ice-hockey leagues in the U.S. Youth-hockey leagues in Canada and Europe have adopted similar changes this season.

Ultimately, USA Hockey says, the stepped-up enforcement will improve the game. "Speed, skill and strength, which were tenets of the game, were being held up by interference, hooking, holding," says Ron DeGregorio, president of USA Hockey, which is based in Colorado Springs, Colo. The changes will also help reduce injuries, he says.

The NHL is pitching in to help resolve the confusion. Several pros, including Ryan Suter from the Nashville Predators and Brian Rolston of the Minnesota Wild, have visited with groups of youth-hockey players to review the changes.

But Ryan Frendewey, an 18-year-old player from Lake Linden, Mich., says he's worried that the chaos could affect his chances of making it to the next level. Mr. Frendewey has dreamed of playing for the University of North Dakota or for Colorado College since he was four. To better his odds, he moved two hours from home to join an elite amateur team, the Marquette Electricians. He lives with a local family and recently took a job at a fast-food place to pay his way.

But he's nervous that scouts are going to pass him by this season or will fail to get a good look at his game because of all the penalties. In one game, the Electricians wracked up 14. "This is a make-or-break season for me," he says. "It's frustrating."

Indeed, some scouts have left games this season scratching their heads. Over the summer, Gene Reilly, head hockey recruiter for Northeastern University in Boston, flew to St. Cloud, Minn., in part to see a highly touted 6-foot, 175-pound center. But for the five days that Mr. Reilly was in town, he barely got a chance to see the candidate play normal, five-on-five hockey. Half the time the center, known for his scoring abilities, was forced to play defense because his team was short-handed -- and when he did get a chance to play offense, it was usually against a team that had one or two fewer players on the ice because the others were sidelined by penalties. "Every game was just penalty after penalty," says Mr. Reilly. "You couldn't evaluate."

For Alex Griffin, a 16-year-old player in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., the changes have forced him to master squeezing himself into a penalty box built for two with four other guys. In a recent game, there were so many penalties -- refs called a total of 50 -- that the penalty box was like a revolving door. Alex was crammed into the corner, his view of the game blocked by the two players forced to stand in front of him. At one point, a player in the box declared that there were almost enough people for a party, and asked another where the chips and salsa were.

Some coaches are resorting to unusual measures to reduce their penalty counts. After coaching the Maple Leafs to three consecutive losses in a recent tournament, Todd Holmes decided that something was missing from his practices: a referee. So he asked one to come and observe the Sylvania, Ohio, team play a mock game. Every time someone got a penalty, the players gathered around the ref, who then explained the violation. "Better have them learn in practice than learn the hard way," says Mr. Holmes.

Jerry Brock Jr., the 17-year-old in Brighton, Mich., whose grandparents have stopped coming to his games, is so exasperated by the changes that he wants to quit. But his father won't let him. His mother, meanwhile, calls Jerry's grandparents before every game to let them know when it starts. But they're refusing to attend until the pace picks up again. "It just doesn't seem much like hockey -- they have to be able to hit each other," says Mrs. Collins, Jerry's 64-year-old grandmother.

Part of the issue may be confusion among refs, which has led to some unevenness in the way the rules are enforced. About 10 percent of USA Hockey refs have yet to take the one-day seminar; they have until the end of November to complete the requirement.

Last month, USA Hockey sent out an email clarifying rules that it said some referees were taking "too literally." Refs were told during their preseason training on the changes, for example, that "the use of a free hand/arm will not be allowed to grab or impede a player's progress." But in last month's follow-up email, USA Hockey said it's actually OK for puck carriers to use their free arm to fend off opposing players.

Refs at first were also told that "the use of the stick will be limited to only playing the puck." But the later email said that a player can use his stick to keep an opponent at bay if the player is fighting for position in front of the net, so long as he keeps the stick close to his body. For refs, though, that email didn't clear up all the questions. Bill Fehrman, a director of the Illinois Hockey Officials Association, which oversees refs in the state, says that within 48 hours of that email, he had already received 20 calls from referees wanting further clarification.