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I would explain it with a “why” too.
When you’re playing, and you and your team are all down by the other team’s net, and someone on the other team gets the puck and then just shoots it all the way down to the other end- well, it just wrecks the game.
So there’s a rule against it.
When you play hockey and it’s your birthday, traditionally a team mate will bake little hockey themed cupcakes. They put icing on them. Nasty stuff, that rink icing.
There are three lines in the middle of the rink. You can only cross two of them before you have to pass the puck to a team mate.
It’s to keep the game interesting and fair. Without icing, anytime a team was up by a goal, they would just repeatedly. dump it the length of the ice every chance they got and get the opposing team to expend all their energy having to skate the length of the ice to retrieve it. It would make the game boring.
Many people have explained what icing is. But hybrid icing is a new phenomenon that the NHL introduced 10 years ago to combat players getting hurt when going back to either touch up for an icing or beat out an icing. Don Cherry famously called for the rule to be put in after pointing out on Coaches Corner how many guys were getting hurt battling all the way to the goalline to either prevent or cause an icing. Instead of the defending or attacking player actually going all the way to the goalline and being the first to touch the puck, the referee makes a judgment call when either player reaches the faceoff dot (so if the defending player is ahead of the attacking player, it’s an automatic icing and the play is blown dead. If the attacking player is ahead of the defending player, the icing is waved off and the two can continue to battle for the loose puck).
It’s one of the rule changes the NHL has gotten right (way less injuries) even though from time to time there can be a dispute on whether either the attacking or defending player reached the faceoff dot first (especially in the playoffs where every call, faceoff matters, an icing or non-icing could be big when it comes to the outcome of the game).
Don Cherry all the way back in 2008 talking about this: https://youtu.be/d8NAVK-DyqA
“We’ll umm icing happen when the puck come down, bang, you know? Before the other guys. Nobody there, you know? My arm go comes up then the game stop then start up.”
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