[ernie]

When they brought the rule in it was an issue that needed to be addressed. Players were clearly doing it on purpose and weren't even subtle about it. There was no ripping it down ice and oops it went over. It was direct flips over the glass just to end the play. I'm talking in the corner, facing the boards and flipping it directly out...no attempt to even go down ice with it.

And at that time it was discretionary on the part of the refs. They could have called it if they wanted to. The very, very rarely did. I wouldn't expect that to change if you went back to that system.

I'm also not sure if making it like icing does anything. A player is tired and running around their zone. They will gladly take the 20 second rest by flipping the puck out (given the refs won't call a discretionary delay of game). That's better than running around for another 20 seconds waiting for the opposition to score. I suppose the non-icing team can gain a bit of an advantage as they do on icing but I'm not really sure the icing rule actually deters players from icing the puck in times of extreme pressure (minor pressure yes).

It's not a perfect rule and I really do dislike it but I'm not sure how else it can be controlled.