Games: Rules

Although all European leagues are affiliated to the IIHF (unlike the NHL and other North American leagues), they all have their own "dialects" of the game rules. Often the rules vary within countries, from league to league.

Basically the game itself remains the same, 3 20-minute periods are played, but the differences occur mainly in the interpretation of rules, and what to do when a game is tied.

Icing rules vary from country to country - some use the touch-up rule, some whistle when the puck crosses the goal line. Red-line offsides are called in some countries.

Overtime and shootout rules vary from league to league. Overtime can be 5 or 10 minutes in the regular season, in some leagues a shootout is necessary to settle a tie. The NHL idea of reducing the field players to 4-on-4 during OT is starting to catch on, the UK's Superleague (ISL) introduced it for the 2000/01 season.

Points are given out on a variety of bases too. Many leagues still keep the traditional 2 points for a win, 1 for a tie, whether or not the game was decided in overtime. Some use the system recently adopted by the NHL of giving a team who loses in OT the point from the regulation time tie... some of these decisions are made in shootouts. Others use the "EHL" model - the European Hockey League was first to introduce this - which awards 3 points to any game. If the game is decided in 60 minutes, all 3 points go to the winner. If the game goes to OT or a shootout, the winner gets 2, the loser one.

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