NHL to Hold Camp Testing Possible Future Rule Changes

On Tuesday the National Hockey League announced plans to put on another Research Development and Orientation Camp next week at the MasterCard Centre for Excellence in Etobicoke, Ont.

The camp provides NHL officials with the opportunity to test a wide array of possible changes to the way the sport is currently played.

Once again the camp will test faceoff variations, switching ends after regulation, hybrid icing and no-touching, along with several new additions.

Among the new additions to the camp is the removal of the goaltender trapezoid that confines the area behind that a goalie can play the puck in.

"Whether we're trying something that is a popular idea or an unpopular idea, all of it is done to just give us more information," said Brendan Shanahan, the NHL's Senior Vice President of Player Safety and Hockey Operations, according to NHL.com. "This is all about us being proactive and not reactive. The game has never been better, but we don't want to rest."

Some of the more drastic rules in line to be tested is a rule that would disallow icing the puck when shorthanded and allowing hand passes in all zones of the ice.

Both rules seem to place a lot more pressure on team defenses in a league that continues to attempt to make its game more exciting to the casual fan.

Being allowed to ice the puck when shorthanded is one of the strangest rules in the sports world in my opinion. A team breaks a rule and is punished by having to play with one fewer players for a short period of time, but at the same time another rule (icing) no longer applies to them.

I've never understood why you would reward the penalized team with that privilege.

For the full list of rules up for analysis visit NHL.com.