I hate the whole intent to blow the whistle thing.
I'm glad the spin-o-ramas are gone. on too many of them it seems that the forward progress was stopped, and wasn't there always supposed to be forward progress of the puck?
Anybody should. Because its basis is false reasoning that people actually retroactively correctly assess what their intent was. In instances that occur fast (hockey) people make mistakes in assessing exactly when something happened. For instance even when they blew their whistle may not be accurately linked to the corresponding play without video review. Including "intent" to blow whistle includes a non event that the ref wouldn't be able to accurately time in his mind in anycase.
It just gives the ref the opportunity to arbitrarily supercede a play with "well I intended to blow the whistle" If you intended you would have blown the damn whistle. Did your brain freeze and you forgot how to blow the whistle? (maybe some remedial whistle blowing training...) If its stuck in your mouth and you're not blowing you're either stunned, have ADHD, or you did not know for sure with the latter being the most likely reason for not blowing the whistle.
Retroactive analysis of events is often wrong. The distortion is it allows a ref to say they were sure about blowing the whistle when in fact they didn't blow it and were unsure.
I should note that this intended to blow the whistle nonsense also gives a seemingly biased ref one more important way to be that. It just makes for more WWE type nonsense where the zebras get to have the game be all about them. Going home with a **** eating grin that they decided the result of a pro hockey game. Probably even a boner...
As to the other changes I don't like the faceoff penalty. The vast majority of face off sets are already illegal. Players cheat on 90% of draws with a ref occasionally intervening and almost at random. A ref doing this twice in a row is more likely to be arbitrary than sound. Just another way to screw a team or player over and give refs licence to make a bonehead call and opportunity to hand a club a PP. I never like rules that give refs MORE discretion. They already screw up the amount afforded them.
The tripping rule is just plain bad. Now Coffey, Orr, the legends of the game, get a penalty for a perfectly executed slide across to block scoring chance EVEN when they make contact with the puck. Whoever deemed this change necessary shouldn't be let anywhere near this kind of task. Punt the bugger back to writing tickets for parking violations
Trapezoid rule is possibly an improvement, as is inadvertently shooting the puck out. I also like that they nixed the spinaround stuff. That was ridiculous anyway. Any shooter theoretically could execute 3 or more spins before taking a shot which frankly looks like a joke. Is this a shootout or an artistic 10pt scoring event..In the spinaramas that were allowed it often seemed like the puck wasn't really moving forward. I don't recall one being called back on puck motion recently. More than anything it seemed the officials just forgot to call those.