 In the 1930s teams began to use a tactic of wasting time by getting the puck in their defense of zone and then shooting at the whole length of the ice. In order to prevent this, because let's face it, it's not very fun to watch, the puck gets shot down the ice and then the other guys have to chase after it and bring it back up and then the defenders just steal it again and shoot it back down the ice. So the icing rule was created. There are three main things that must happen for an icing to occur, but there are a bunch of different little things that can prevent it. So first I'm going to describe a simple icing and then we'll go back and we'll take a look at all the things that would prevent it from being called. The first thing is that the guy shooting the puck must be behind the red line and then he has to shoot the puck down here past the goal line. If those two things happen then an imaginary line is formed across these two faceoff circles and the final ingredient of an icing is that a player on the other team who did not shoot the puck must cross this line before a teammate of the player who did shoot the puck. So behind the red line past the goal line, the opponent must cross the faceoff, spots the line first. If that happens the referee will blow his whistle, call an icing and there is a faceoff back down here in the defensive zone of the team who shot the puck. Say we're the green team here. It's in our best interest to not have an icing call. This is something that we do not want to happen because we want to keep the puck as far away from our goal as we can get it. So the simplest thing that we can do to prevent an icing is something called gaining the line. To gain the red line means that you must have the puck on your stick and the puck must be on if not past the red line before you shoot it. If you shoot it from here we have a potential icing but if you just take a few steps forward to gain the red line and you shoot it from here play continues without an icing. The second part is that the puck must cross the goal line. To clarify if it goes in the net no matter where it was shot from it is a goal but remember that the goal line extends the entire way across the ice. So this means that if I shoot the puck from back here but it only goes to here it's not an icing. It must go the whole way past the goal line. Finally, if we have shot the puck from behind the red line and it goes past the goal line we can still stop it from being an icing by winning a race to the faceoff circle line. The race to this line is actually a brand new rule for the NHL at least as I record this in the October of 2013 it is. So we'll come back to see why this race to the faceoff dot exists in a second. Okay so let's look at all of those little things that will prevent an icing from being called. First if your team is short-handed or which means you're killing a penalty you cannot be called for icing so you can shoot the puck down on the ice all you want and there is no icing. In fact this is probably what most teams will do whenever they are killing a penalty. They will not be called for icing. If you are on the power play however you can still be called for icing. Next, if the goalie plays the puck the icing is taken away. That one's pretty simple. Next one is that you cannot ice a puck directly off a faceoff. So usually whenever there's a faceoff the guys will try to pull the puck back to their teammates but every once in a while you'll see a guy try to go forward. If in that event it would seem to fulfill the criteria of an icing it would not be called just because it was happening directly off of a faceoff. And last if the referee sees the puck go past a player on the other team who he thinks could have played the puck but that that player just let the puck go by him just so he could get the icing call then the referee is allowed to wave off the icing and play and will continue. So if you watch the referee the signal he will make for an icing is to hold one arm straight up in the air and oh look here's a creepy referee to demonstrate for us now. You might also see a goalie make the signal to race his arm in the air to signal to his teammates that there's a potential icing in effect and that they should race back past that line. If an icing is waved off for whatever reason like the guy on the other team who lets the puck go by him the referee will wave his arms in front of him back and forth just kind of like an NFL referee would for a missed field goal. Okay let's go to the next slide because that guy is creeping me out. The final thing that we'll look at is the different types of icings that have been adopted by different leagues. If you're brand new to hockey you won't know any different so the part of the icing where the two players race for the face-off spot line might not seem strange but as I said this is a brand new rule in the NHL and this particular type of icing is called a hybrid icing. It's called a hybrid because it's a combination of two other types of icings the automatic icing and the touch icing. For the majority of its existence the NHL used the touch icing system which meant that if a puck was shot from behind the red line and it went past the goal line a player on the other team would actually have to skate down and touch the puck with his stick but if a player on the team who shot the puck could get there and touch it first the icing would be waved off. So this meant that there was still that race only it was to the puck itself rather than to the line and because by definition the puck was shot down very close to the boards players would have to skate very fast and then stop very quickly very close to the boards so considering this happened multiple times each game players really didn't get hurt all that often and this rule was used like this for decades but they would get hurt on occasion so rather than a race to the puck it is now a race to the line which is much further away from the boards and a much safer way to call the icing which is why they changed it. The most popular system in the world is probably at the other end of the spectrum from the touch icing that's the automatic icing or it's sometimes called the no touch icing and this is used in many leagues particularly with younger players and during international competitions like the Olympics the automatic icing eliminates all races it just states that if the puck is shot from behind the red line and it crosses the goal line the icing the whistle is blown as soon as it crosses the goal line and it's automatically and icing as soon as it crosses that line so touch icing meant you actually have to race to the puck automatic icing means nobody's racing to touch anything or get anywhere and the hybrid icing which is now used in the NHL is in between with the race to the face-off spots not the puck itself so regardless of how you call icing though it is an important aspect in keeping things exciting hopefully that will give you a better understanding of how it works thanks