The dry scrape is a buzz kill, according to Red Wings GM Ken Holland. As of Saturday, that buzz kill is no more. The dry scrape-era is coming to an end.
The last Zamboni run of the night will happen prior to the start of the third period. After that, it’s all shovels and squeegees.
That’s one less Zamboni ride for you… (Image: Nate J/Flickr)
“It’s one of the few things that has never worked out,” said NHL VP Colin Campbell via NHL.com. “It hasn’t worked out. It’s not good for the fans, it hasn’t been good for the players. We were trying to come up with good ice, and we were trying to have more completions in overtime. Results aren’t great at more completions in overtime, and more than anything it was a killer for everybody at the end of the game.”
The league felt the extra delay required for the dry scrape simply wasn’t improving conditions – or the on-ice game – to justify its existence. The ice crews will shovel the ice, as they do for TV timeouts, allowing teams to get back to the action in under two minutes.
“The feeling in [the GM meetings] was the dry scrape is a buzzkill,” said Detroit Red Wings GM Ken Holland. “It is just taking too long to get from the end of the game back to playing, so we’re going to use people to shovel the ice, try within 90 seconds to two minutes to get back up and playing.”
“The air came out of the balloon,” said Calgary Flames GM Brad Treliving. “You’re going into overtime and you’ve got a tie game and all this energy in the building and you had this dead time before you started overtime. It was just a complete buzzkill.”
“We lost a lot of fans for the overtime,” said Predators GM David Poile. “I think we just did the right thing. We made the right decision to make that change back and no harm, no foul.”
Games not decided in overtime will go immediately to a shootout without any additional ice cleaning.
