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Champions League is inserting some interesting new power play rules: Around the World

Originally posted on Canucksarmy | Last updated 8/30/23

Normally, Quads writes these ‘Around the League’ articles here at CanucksArmy.

But I ask, why stop there?

Why not work harder, Quads?

We’ve got some interesting hockey news around the world that will affect some Canucks prospects as well.

Champions Hockey League is a season-long side quest for European teams as they look to be crowned champions of European hockey. This year, there will be 24 teams, who will each play six quote-unquote regular season games before they determine the top 16 teams from Champions League, who will compete in a 16-team playoff which features three rounds of a two-game, home-and-away, aggregate-scoring series. There will be a one-game final to determine the Champions League winner on February 20th. 2024.

Last year’s champions came from the Finnish Liiga in the Tappara Tampere.

This year’s crop will have a small dose of Canucks prospects involved. Lucas Forsell and his club Fäjestad will represent Sweden while Viktor Persson and his Lahti Pelicans along with Joni Jurmo and his Ilves Tampere are two of the Liiga representatives.

We will be following the Canucks’ prospect in CHL action but there’s something we wanted to open up for discussion as the IIHF announced new rules for the power play this year.

The new rules:

• A team will remain shorthanded even if the opposing team score a goal.
• A minor penalty will be served even if a goal is scored while a delayed penalty is pending.
• If a shorthanded team scores, the minor penalty against will end. https://t.co/HGt4ykN0Jt

— Gord Miller (@GMillerTSN) August 30, 2023

The new rules will give power play units a chance to score as many goals as they can during a two-minute penalty.

So, basically, once you score a goal while on a power play, the refs will take the puck back to centre ice and you will continue on with your power play in a similar way to scoring on a major penalty power play.

An interesting wrinkle is that if a team scores a shorthanded goal, that will immediately kill off the penalty.

I’ll tell you what, I kind of dig it.

The type of boost your team can get from a shorthanded goal is electric. Imagine the bench going wild in a one-goal game when getting a scoring chance on the penalty kill.

We reached out to Canucks prospect Lucas Forsell to get his opinion and he thought the rule change was a bit weird.

“I think the rules are a bit weird but hopefully it will bring more goals so more people come to the games because that has been a problem in Sweden that people don’t buy tickets to the CHL games,” said Forsell.

He also went on to laugh about it being pretty cool if he could score a hat trick on a single power play.

I’m curious to get your thoughts on the power play rules.

Could this be something we see in the NHL one day?

The league is always talking about wanting more goals and more excitement, and I believe this rule change in the Champions League will create more goals.

This article first appeared on Canucksarmy and was syndicated with permission.

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