I like to propose that if a Captain isn’t able to sit their Captains penalty as a blocker, a substitute should be serving in their place.
R5.4
If a penalty is assessed to a Captain due to the fact that they are the Captain, they will serve the penalty in the next jam in which they are able to serve as a Blocker.
C5.4.A
White Captain is the Jammer and commits a penalty. In response, the White Team Staff curses loudly at the Official who called the penalty.
Outcome: A penalty is assessed to White Captain for their Team Staff’s insubordination, but White Captain’s time in the Penalty Box as Jammer is not extended. After the Jam, if White Captain is no longer seated in the Box as the Jammer, White Captain must report to the Box as a Blocker to serve the penalty earned by their Team Staff.
Rationale: When a Captain serves a penalty due to the fact that they are the team’s Captain, the penalty is served with the Captain as a Blocker. In this scenario, the Captain was unable to immediately serve the penalty as a Blocker because they could not hold the Role of Blocker. As soon as they are able to skate as a Blocker, they should report to the Box as a Blocker in order to receive that penalty.
Actual situation from some years ago:
Green captain is in the box as a Jammer at the end of a jam. Period clock is at 00:10 when Green Alternate asks for a TTO. JT quickly calls the TTO. It is then noticed Green doesn’t have a TTO or OR left. So, that means a delay of game penalty to the captain. But as Green Jammer is already in the box as a non-blocker, they cannot serve that penalty.
We eventually decided that a substitute skater should sit out the captains penalty.
I had a discussion about this after the game and someone asked why handle this situation different from when it would happen mid game. During mid game you would wait until the captain is available. That makes sense, so therefor I would suggest we would do the same thing during the whole game, as it can have a different impact on the game.
Situation 1:
Green team receives a captains penalty. Green pivot is already in the box and is the captain. Next jam the green team will start with 3 blockers on track. The jam after that the captain will sit as blocker.
Situation 2:
Green team receives a captains penalty. Green pivot is already in the box and is not the captain. Next jam the green captain can sit as blocker and the team will start with 2 blockers on track.
It feels that both situations should be handled the same as there is now a (minimal) difference in how big the disadvantage is that the team is getting.
I think this is a good idea. And to be clear, the way this would need to work is not just to ALLOW teams to seat a sub if their captain is unavailable to sit as a Blocker, but to REQUIRE them to do so. This would also apply, for example, if the captain is sitting three jams for injury.
As it stands now, if your coach flips off the mascot (or whatever), the team might get to wait a jam or two to actually face the consequences. This is especially pronounced towards the end of the game, where they might NEVER actually have to skate short.
That said, the penalty should always be ASSIGNED to the captain, even if a sub serves it. That way there’s still the incentive to stop flipping off mascots if you don’t want your captain to foul out of the game.
So for me, this seems fine and we should not make a change, for two reasons.
Overall for an edge case to warrant a rules change, in my opinion, it must both be reasonably frequent (such that the issue comes up a lot), and it must be exploitable such that the game would be overall demeaned if people utilized the edge case or loophole. Otherwise it’s just more words to have to learn and remember, and for what.
Because this is extremely rare, and also because there is absolutely no benefit from sending your captain to the box as a jammer, and because “captain penalties” incurred by other people can already be handled through other means (grievance, suspension) if someone tried to exploit them, it doesn’t really meet my standard for changing the rules or creating a case.
Unrelated to those metrics, something rubs me the wrong way about treating “the last jam” as special for any reason. Part of this is that you don’t know it’s the last jam until it’s over (b/c of the “officiating error” loophole), but also, if that loophole didn’t apply (b/c the score is super lopsided and another jam wouldn’t change the winner), then the scenario in question becomes unimportant to fix (because missing a blocker for a few seconds produces less opportunity to change the winner than a whole additional jam.)
The other unclear issue at the moment is whether a captain serving as a PIVOT can have their time exteneded, or whether they need to return in a subsequent jam without the stripe. This ambiguity arises because pivots are blockers, but the rules say the captain serves their time as a captial-B Blocker. If nothing else, that issue should be clarified.
I don’t see the confusion. The rules say the pivot is a (capital-B) Blocker. There are several places where the rules use the term “Non-Pivot Blocker” to clarify that it’s talking about a blocker that’s not the pivot. When the rules say the captain serves as a Blocker I don’t see any reason to interpret that as Non-Pivot Blocker.
If we start treating the term Blocker to mean Non-Pivot Blocker then the rules break in several ways. For example you would only score 3 points per trip because points are earned by lapping Blockers.
This change would remove an exception, not add one - we already have 4.4.3. Skaters Unable to Serve Penalties, stating:
Captains not being able to serve as a Blocker could just become another instance of that rule instead of a separate one.
(And yes, there’s an exception to the “not skate for the following three Jams” part needed. But that’s needed for C2.2.4.F and related situations as well, so not specific to this scenario.)
They also say in the Glossary:
So arguably there is no ambiguity - capital-B Blocker includes Pivot - it’s just that many people find that counterintuitive. (Which could still warrant a “yes, this is what we intended” statement from Rules Theory - or a change if it isn’t intended.)
This would also be an exception from C2.2.4.F though.
Under this proposal the Captain is serving their Jammer penalty while their substitute is simultaneously serving their Blocker/Captain penalty, which would be a deviation from this principle.
Having said that, I’m in favour of the change anyway. There’s another weird edge case under the current system that occurs to me. If the Captain is serving their sixth penalty as a Jammer and then between jams received a Captain’s penalty this causes them to foul out. Do we:
Option A: Force a single skater to be the substitute Jammer in the next jam and then the next possible Jam serve the Blocker penalty so that the gameflow is the same as it would have been if this hadn’t caused a foul out. This feels weird because of the premise quoted above that penalty time is assigned to a Role not a Skater, and these are different Roles.
Option B: Keep the penalties on separate Jams but allow a different substitute for each? This maintains the expected game flow and premise that penalty time is assigned to a Role, but also feels weirdly forced. The only reason we usually delay the Blocker penalty is because the Skater can’t serve in two Roles simultaneously, which isn’t the case here.
Option C: Allow two substitutes - one for the Jammer penalty and one for the Blocker penalty - to serve at the same time. This upholds the premise of penalty time being served by the Role, but alters the gameflow from what would have happened if the Captain hadn’t fouled out.
The OP proposal would remove this weird edge case, as we could go with C and game flow would be unaltered.
Wouldn’t the team be required to designate a new captain in that case? Paragraph 1.2 states:
Each team may have one Captain and one Alternate. The Captain must be a Skater able to serve penalties on behalf of their team. The Alternate may be a non-skating participant. A team must designate a Captain if one is necessary to serve a penalty on behalf of the team. The Captain and Alternate must be visibly identified by wearing a “C” and an “A”, respectively, on their uniform or body.
By fouling out the captain does no longer fulfil the criteria for being captain. Thus upon receiving a Captain’s penalty, the team would be required to designate a new player as their captain.
Yes, but the penalty has already been issued to the previous Captain. They need a substitute to serve their time because they fouled out. Under 5.4 it says “the Skater’s team must be given the opportunity to substitute a different Skater to serve the remainder of the penalty in the same Role as the removed Skater”. Role is defined in the glossary as Jammer, Pivot or Blocker. I don’t see anything that says that a Captain’s substitute has to be the new Captain, even if it’s a Captain’s penalty.
Even if I’m misinterpreting that and it is felt that the substitute for a Captain’s penalty has to be the new Captain, the same problem arises.
Option A: Are we forcing the new Captain to sit the remainder of the Jammer penalty even though that wasn’t a Captain penalty?
Option B: Do we force new Captain to sit out until that have chance to sit the Captain’s penalty?
Option C: Do we have two substitutes - any Skater for the Jammer penalty, and the Captain for the Captain’s penalty?
Actually according to the rules there would be a contradiction if the Captain were to foul out due to a Captain’s penalty.
Paragraph 1.2 states that the Captain must be able to serve a Captain’s penalty.
Each team may have one Captain and one Alternate. The Captain must be a Skater able to serve penalties on behalf of their team. The Alternate may be a non-skating participant. A team must designate a Captain if one is necessary to serve a penalty on behalf of the team. The Captain and Alternate must be visibly identified by wearing a “C” and an “A”, respectively, on their uniform or body.
Thus one could make the argument that a captain does no longer fulfil the criteria for being captain after they have received 6 penalties. If they would serve the Captain’s penalty they would at that point no longer be able to serve an additional Captain’s penalty. Therefore they are unable to sit that penalty while still being the Captain.
Thus I would argue, that acording to the rules the team should be required to designate a new Captain once their Captain has received 6 penalties.
That is very clearly the intention. That does however not resolve the contradiction that they according to 1.2 can no longer be captain while serving that penalty. Thus technically the penalty is not served by the captain, but by a substitute.
It also opens the question at what moment the penalized team is entitled to designate a new captain. According to my interpretation they should be allowed to designate a new captain before the jam in which the former captain serves their seventh penalty.
I can see your point, although if they received a 7th penalty on behalf of their team during a Jam they would be able to serve it. Either way though, the initial dilemma remains unchanged.
I agree a new Captain can be selected before the next Jam starts if they want or need to, however that doesn’t change the fact that the old Captain still received the penalty and fouled out due to it. Therefore normal substitution rules seem to apply. I don’t see anything that says a Captain’s substitute has to be the new Captain, only that they must be in the same Role (Jammer, Pivot or Blocker).
Now that we’re thinking about it and talking about it, I do recall Rules Theory discussing this edge case explicitly when we were deciding how to write the bit about Captain penalties in the 2017 rewrite or a bit before.
Theory’s rationale was that the Captain got penalties assigned to them for their team’s behavior, but that the correct price of a team’s behavior was a blocker penalty, not a Jammer penalty, and certainly not a “who-knows-what” penalty based on the role the Captain was playing at that time.
They also discussed how they wanted the actual person in charge of the team to be the one who missed gametime, such that all of the powers of a Captain (calling timeouts, talking to the HR) would also be penalized.
When they discussed the edge case of the last jam, consensus was that “the last jam should not be special,” and general alignment that we already have many cases where the game ends with someone’s penalty time unserved.
Application discussed ways to try to meet all of those goals, and we came up with some ideas, but Theory felt that they were too complicated given the rarity of the situation. So that’s why we’re here now – it’s super rare, when it happens it’s not a big deal, similar scenarios already occur and are not a problem, so it’s not worth adding complexity.
I forget who was on Rules then but @Whacks_Poetic or @revriot or @ump can probably keep me honest here? But also that was a long time ago, perhaps modern Rules feels that this is worth addressing?
Coincidentally enough, I believe this situation occurred last night during the Black Diaspora vs Team Canada first-place game at Ya’ll Stars. I think it was Yeti who was sitting in the box serving a penalty as the Pivot from the previous jam, then their team failed to field a jammer (jammer cover missing), so Yeti had to serve the Delay of Game penalty as the captain. Since they were already in the box, there was a long OTO to discuss it. It looks like the outcome was to have them serve that second penalty in addition to finishing the first one - essentially 1 min in the box.
Crazy that I’ve never seen this occur, then read about it on here - then see it happen shortly after on a primetime game!