How the No Escape Rule Has Affected Teams’ Penalty Kill Mindset

It used to be that teams had ‘specialists’ for special teams (power plays and penalty killing). They’d work on extra aspects of the game precisely for those situations and other players wouldn’t usually be called upon to possess those extra skills. You could count on having two sets of each, and sometimes a few others would be available and understand the systems.

However, with the addition of the ‘no escape’ rule in the PWHL this season where the players on the ice when an infraction is called have to stay for the start of the penalty kill, teams have had to hustle to adapt. In many cases, that involves teaching basic penalty kill concepts to players that have never had to be in those roles.

Toronto Sceptres’ coach Troy Ryan has studied the rule’s effect, and has seen how his own team has struggled adjusting to the variable circumstances.

The Sceptres’ penalty kill started off the season hovering around fifty percent, although it has improved dramatically in the last two games.

“I think sometimes when teams are not successful on the penalty kill, they go on with the mindset that they've got to to kill two minutes,” Ryan said.

“Last year, we had a bit of a mindset that it was a 30-second kill. So it was like, you go hungry and aggressive and just looking to create mistakes all over the ice.”

The jailbreak rule added another layer of urgency for those penalty killers, like Emma Maltais, to use their speed and angles to force power plays into errors, possible turnovers, and discomfort in general.

“And now this year we don't have that ability, obviously, to put those people on the ice that play with that mentality,” noted Ryan.

“So we just recently started to shift our focus to almost like 15-second kills where you just may need one clear and you may need one faceoff win to get you that 15 seconds so you can get [the puck] further so you can get the right people on the ice.”

Case in point: when a defender goes to the box, it leaves three forwards and one D as the four shorthanded players, and clearly it has created some havoc for teams to prioritize their focus in that situation.

Ryan explained, “I think at the start of it [when they learned about the rule], it's like you're spending some time teaching the whole kill, when in reality, we have a number of players on our team that have been killing a bit that this year that we don't need to teach them the penalty kill forecheck, because if they get a puck down to the other end, we don't want them to go down to forecheck, we want them to get off the ice so we get the other people on the ice.”

In other words, if you’re not a typical penalty killer, your job has changed from what a shorthanded forward might normally do. Instead, you need to concentrate on whatever gives your team the chance to relieve offensive pressure.

Now you’ll see teams pointedly working on winning a faceoff or gaining possession as quickly as possible to make the all-important line change.

“There's a lot of logistics that go with that,” explains Ryan. “Some people will get a clear and they'll extend their shift a little bit. But it's a commitment that the team has to make that there's a group of people that kill for 10-15 seconds. If they get caught out past that, we're probably in trouble.

“And then there's another group that should step on the ice with a thirty-second mentality.”

The Sceptres practiced those shorter bursts of pressing to get the puck down the ice, and it has been reflected in their improved numbers already. It means we might see a subset of specialists who know how to perform a “quick strike” clear.

Other PWHL coaches will surely continue to find ways to adapt and even take advantage of the new rules to make the game more intriguing.