With realignment taking place next year, there is a chance for several hockey conferences to experiment with new rules. It appears that he Big Ten is taking that to heart.
Chris Solari of the Lansing State Journal reports that the conference, which will begin play this fall, is looking to bring in a few new rules; including a "War Room" like the NHL has in Toronto.
Michigan State's hockey coach said last week that off-site video replay is one topic the startup Big Ten hockey league has discussed. And as head of the NCAA's rules committee, Anastos said its something other conferences will be monitoring.
"It would be implementing our current NCAA video replay policy through a command center-type setup like the NHL does," Anastos said. "Now, we haven't done that yet. But that's something we talked about at the (NCAA) rules committee and we talked about the Big Ten potentially exploring its benefit and reporting back to the (NCAA) committee."
A central video replay system may work better with the Big Ten as an experiment because of its small size. There are only six teams - Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State, Penn State and Wisconsin - compared with the 12 (not 13) the WCHA had last season.
Other changes to the Big Ten include continuing the now-defunct CCHA's method of ending ties with a shootout and TV timeouts. The conference will schedule their breaks at the first whistle following the15, 10 and 6 minute mark.
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