Each hockey game lasts a full 60 minutes. But as the Harvard women’s hockey team learned this weekend, penalties can drag the game out a lot further.

From the 25 penalties handed out during the Crimson’s game on Friday night against Colgate, players spent 48:02 in the box.

Small wonder, then, that ECAC coaches are already frustrated about the lack of playing time for their non-special teams skaters.

“You practice power play and penalty kill all week and its only certain people,” Colgate coach Scott Wiley said. “You got kids sitting there for 10, 15 minutes at a stretch. But it’s what we asked [the referees] to do.”

What seemed to confuse players and coaches of Harvard and Colgate most on Friday night were penalties called without a clear offender in the action—leaving all 10 on-ice players standing around waiting to see who would be spending the time in the penalty box.

“The hard ones are the sort of ticky-tack ones,” Wiley said, “where nobody knows what the call is until she goes to the box and points to one side of the box or another.”

Nevertheless, the coaches made this decision to tighten up the game and focus on the players’ skill, leading to a new rules emphasis to which all teams will have to adapt.

This rule calls for referees to call the smaller clutch-and-grab tactics in an attempt to reduce traffic and create more open ice and scoring.

For Harvard—as for almost all teams around the country—it means working on becoming flawless on special teams, which will become more important with the increased penalty time.

“It’s really different, but we have to get used to it because it’s not going to change,” said freshman winger Sarah Vaillancourt.

PLAYING BY THE RULES

Since the new rules have increased both the number of power-play and penalty-kill minutes during a game, perfecting special teams operations is crucial to the Crimson’s success this season—and Harvard looked to start off on the right foot this weekend.

“It’s just experience,” Harvard coach Katey Stone said. “Our power play is nowhere near where it needs to be, but it’s good. When you execute and have success, it’s the best way to learn.”

While on Friday night the Crimson struggled on man-up situations—scoring once on eight opportunities—it worked much more efficiently the next day against Cornell, scoring three times on eight power plays and posting seven more shots overall during that time.

In the third period, Harvard went 3-4 on its chances and seemed to come together as a unit. As of now, Harvard’s top line for these opportunities consists of Vaillancourt, tri-captain Nicole Corriero and junior tri-captain Julie Chu, along with winger Jennifer Raimondi and senior Ashley Banfield.