1st Period · Lesson 4 of 12 · Free
Icing
Shooting the puck the length of the ice to get rid of it has a price.
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1/4 Home is at full strength and under pressure in its own half. A home player fires the puck down the ice.
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2/4 The puck crosses the far goal line untouched. In the NFHS book, icing is called the moment it crosses: nobody has to race for it.
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3/4 The faceoff goes back to home's own end, at the dot on the side the puck was shot from. Icing gets the pressure off, but it costs the ice home had gained.
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4/4 Not icing: when the team shooting it is shorthanded (a player in the box), it may shoot the puck down the ice as much as it likes.
Icing is a team at equal or greater strength sending the puck from its own half of the ice past the opponent's goal line, untouched. Under the NFHS book the official calls it as soon as the puck crosses that line ("no-touch" icing).
It is waved off when the team is shorthanded, when the puck came straight off a faceoff, when an opponent touched it, when an opponent other than the goalie could have played it, or when the goalie plays it. When a penalty is just about to end, the officials judge it at the moment the penalty expires.
If icing is called by mistake, the faceoff is at center ice. College hockey uses "hybrid" icing (a race to the faceoff dots), so what you see on TV may look different. New for 2026-27, the NFHS lets state associations allow the other team to pick which end-zone dot is used after icing; whether Ohio has adopted it is for the OHSAA to say.