Glen Sather and Icing Safety: Compassion or Gamesmanship?

It’s nice that Rangers’ GM Glen Sather is coming out, very publicly, in favor of the NHL adopting some kind of no-touch icing rule. Sather’s in favor of the race to the puck stopping at the faceoff dots, rather than around the boards. Sather was commenting on the state of icing in the NHL because of Oiler defenseman Taylor Fendun’s horrific leg injury, which occurred during a race for an iced puck. But while I believe Sather is sincere in his comments, the timing, Fendun’s injury aside, is rather interesting. Because two games into a new season, the Rangers’ offense has been experimenting with a new (for them) strategy. The team has been shooting the puck into the offensive zone from right inside the red line, an aggressive dump-and-chase maneuver. So far, it hasn’t been working for the Rangers, who lack the strength on their top line to get to the puck and lack the finesse on their second line to do anything productive when they have the...