Face-off Procedures

by **onpoint** on Fri Jul 29, 2005 7:44 am

Okay, while up in Vail, I was talking to some of the more prominent referees in our sport who usually come up to officiate. Generally, we get refs who have officiated some of the biggest Division I and east coast high school games of the year. One of the things that I noted before in the MDIA that really bothers me is when the players go down to face-off, there is a "down . . . . . . set . . . . . . (whistle)" to start the action. Speaking with the officials up there, they told me that they are taught to get that whistle off as soon as they can when the players are set. So instead of the above, it's more like "down . . . . . set(whistle)." They said that there are several reasons for this. One being that there are less illegal procedures because there is not an inordinate amount of time for the players to sit there waiting to go and another being that it makes it harder for the players to jump the whistle. Then they can mix up their cadence if they feel like someone is gaining an unfair advantage. I hope to see a little bit more of this in the MDIA instead of the "wait for it . . . . wait for it . . . . wait for it . . . " version that we have going here now.

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by **laxfan25** on Fri Jul 29, 2005 12:23 pm

The mechanic for officials is to blow the whistle soon after set, but DO vary the cadence so that players don't anticipate the whistle. I'm not talking about 1 to 2 seconds, but fractions of a second difference in the timing will keep the players from jumping early.
At least in the MDIA games I have done, I haven't noticed an inordinate time lag from Set to whistle. One thing I have noticed at the higher levels is that they are very lenient on player positioning, i.e. both FO men will be leaning well into the neutral zone. The feeling is that if both are violating, there is no advantage and we're going to go. This has been a big point of contention the last couple of years, which is why there has been so much emphasis on trying to clean up the face-offs. IMHO, in spite of lots of memos coming out about this from the Chief of Officials, enforcement is still lagging. The refs don't want to have a parade of faceoff violations and get bad marks from the coaches. In one of the playoff games this year they were calling it tighter, and there were a ton of violations called.
In my area, all the refs are pretty strict on proper setup. The teams realize this and we have very few problems or complaints, because the tone has been set from early in the season on. "Everything left of the head of the stick, stick straight up and down, no hand on the plastic and both hands on the ground, parallel to the line". It's not that tough to execute as a player or call as an official.

by **UofMLaxGoalie11** on Wed Aug 03, 2005 10:24 pm

say that both players are cheating equally. if youre trying to enforce face-offs more, who do you call a procedure on? the only semi-fair thing i can think of is if you did an alternate possesion.

by **Sonny** on Thu Aug 04, 2005 7:03 am

UofMLaxGoalie11 wrote:say that both players are cheating equally. if youre trying to enforce face-offs more, who do you call a procedure on? the only semi-fair thing i can think of is if you did an alternate possesion.

In my book, one player has to be more "illegal" then the other.

by **laxfan25** on Fri Aug 05, 2005 6:57 am

UofMLaxGoalie11 wrote:say that both players are cheating equally. if youre trying to enforce face-offs more, who do you call a procedure on? the only semi-fair thing i can think of is if you did an alternate possesion.

In one of my D3 games, the pre-game said that if both players are violating - "pick one and bang 'em", prefereably one who is leaning in a fraction more than the other.
Hopefully they'll get the idea and clean it up going forward in the game.

by **shrekjr** on Fri Aug 05, 2005 1:14 pm

I'm not sure if I like it or not but like the others said, the current philosophy here is also to pick the one "cheating" the most, call it and get the game moving. That's what the boss says so that's what we do.

I will say I saw a game last year where an official had both players get up and start over. One of the coaches started yelling, "Just pick one and let's play"! So I guess that's what the coaches want too???

by **LaxRef** on Sun Aug 07, 2005 9:47 pm

I don't get the "which one is cheating worse" philosophy. Is there a guidebook that tells us, for example, whether a stick leaning forward is worse than one not parallel to the line, or worse than a neutral zone infraction?

by **shrekjr** on Sun Aug 07, 2005 11:23 pm

LaxRef wrote:I don't get the "which one is cheating worse" philosophy. Is there a guidebook that tells us, for example, whether a stick leaning forward is worse than one not parallel to the line, or worse than a neutral zone infraction?

I agree! Didn't say I like it.

by **laxfan25** on Mon Aug 08, 2005 10:48 am

That's why it's nice in our geographic area, we've been enforcing proper faceoff mechanics from the get-go. On a rare occasion we may stand them both up, but other than that for the most part we have very, very few violations.
It just shows that proper enforcement CAN clean things up. If we continue on the path of either letting 'em go because they're both violating, or picking one each time, things will never get any better.
It was a little disheartening going to other areas and seeing the mess that can result from lack of enforcement. And of course I get the weird looks when I try to straighten things out. So like so many, you just go with the local flow - don't want to rock the boat!