NHL officials get another option when reviewing major penalties in 2022-23
The NHL's rulebook will mostly stay the same for the upcoming season. There is, however, one change that will give referees more options when reviewing a major penalty.
Last season, when a five minute major was called, officials could review the play and decide to keep it a major penalty, or reduce the punishment to a two-minute minor. They'll have an extra option in the upcoming season. Here's the updated rule as published by ScoutingTheRefs.com:
This is the first time that officials will have the option of cancelling the penalty entirely. This could come in handy in several cases. One example is when a player gets hit by his own stick, or the stick of a teammate, with the referee thinking the culprit was an opposing player. Last season, even if the review showed no fault on the part of the opposing player, the best an official could do was reduce a major penalty that was called to a minor one. That is now no longer the case.
It's good to see the NHL taking steps to try and get things right as much as possible. There will always be room for, and concern over human error, of course, but the league seems intent on doing what it can to get calls right, which is a good thing.
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MAY 1, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Tage Thompson | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Mattias Samuelsson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Alex Tuch | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Rasmus Dahlin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Peyton Krebs | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Josh Anderson | - | - | - | |
| Jonathan Aspirot | - | - | - | |
| Zach Benson | - | - | - | |
| Oliver Bjorkstrand | - | - | - | |
| Zachary Bolduc | - | - | - | |
| Bowen Byram | - | - | - | |
| Alexandre Carrier | - | - | - | |
| Cole Caufield | - | - | - | |
| Erik Cernak | - | - | - | |
| Anthony Cirelli | - | - | - | |
| Charles-Edouard D'Astous | - | - | - | |
| Kirby Dach | - | - | - | |
| Phillip Danault | - | - | - | |
| Ivan Demidov | - | - | - | |
| Josh Doan | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||