In the top conference of women's NCAA hockey, an expected rule change will allow players to play the puck with a high stick.
WCHA commissioner Michelle McAteer told The Hockey News' women's hockey reporter Ian Kennedy that the experimental rule, which is set to be implemented for the 2025-26 season, allows players to bat a puck down or look for high redirects and tip-ins in the offensive zone.
"There is a strong interest in this concept from the coaches, and it has been discussed for years," McAteer told Kennedy as part of a longer interview.
There are caveats to the new rule - there can be no high-sticking of the puck during penalty shots or shootouts, and if a player makes contact with someone when they raise their stick, they will still be penalized for it.
Now, in the WCHA and all of NCAA hockey, players must wear a full face shield on their helmets, not a visor. So the risks of getting cut by a high stick are lower.
However, sports leagues can learn from each other. While we haven't seen the effects of this rule change just yet, it should be closely monitored by the NHL and other pro hockey leagues with an eye toward implementing their own version of the relaxed high-sticking standard.
As Kennedy chronicled this week, the high-sticking change is designed to create more offense. But it should also create more chaos - and at a point in hockey's evolution in which the game is hyper-coached, creating chaos is exactly the type of thing that will allow for more skill and creativity to be rewarded.
NCAA Conference Set To Permit High Sticking Pucks With Experimental New Rule The WCHA, women's hockey's top NCAA conference, is set to implement an experimental new for the 2025-26 season. The "unlimited high-sticking rule" will allow players to play the puck with their stick at any height, including to score goals.
This is why this writer has long advocated for moves like this rule change for quite some time.
You have to regard your games as an entertainment product, and in doing so, you have to get out in front of organic developments that inhibit a high-quality entertainment product.
We always say to think of hockey games as a garden of sorts. If you don't tend to your garden, you'll eventually be dealing with weeds and an overall unkempt appearance. But regular pruning ensures a high-quality product.
The PWHL has done an effective job of trying out new rules, such as the popular jailbreak rule that ends the penalty kill when a team scores shorthanded, the Gold Plan for determining the team that gets the first overall pick in the draft, and the "no escape" rule that prevents a team that took a penalty from changing before the first faceoff.
This is also what the high-stick rule change is getting at. You want more action in and around the net, and allowing players to get their stick higher (while also demanding they not be reckless with the stick) to create more deflections and odd bounces in and around the net is a worthy goal to help steer the entertainment product in a positive direction.
There may be unintended consequences of permitting sticks to be raised, but this is why places like the NCAA can serve as a test market for leagues like the NHL and AHL. The NCAA can freely adopt important rule tweaks with a pure focus on making the game more enjoyable. And if things don't pan out as expected, they can always revert to previous iterations of any rule.
But next season, the WCHA's rule change on high sticks will be watched like a hawk. If things are addressed in the way the conference hopes they will be addressed, the NHL and AHL should quickly follow suit. Experimenting with rule changes is a vital part of keeping a league evolving and creative. And at this time next year, there will be a solid set of data illustrating whether the mission was accomplished.
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