UK and England Rules

Key focus

Play to the IIHF rule book, not the NHL's, wherever you play in Britain. When any document flags an IIHF difference, that is your game; a USA Hockey or Hockey Canada flag is not. Then find out which domestic layer sits on top of it in your competition, because it overrides the IIHF book where the two differ: the In-House Rules in the NIHL, the SNL, women's hockey, the recreational and junior game and university hockey, or the EIHL Casebook, a different document, in the Elite League.

Wear a neck laceration protector every time you go on the ice, and if it comes off during play, leave the ice without stopping to pick it up. It is mandatory in every game at every British level, adults included; USA Hockey's adult exemption and Hockey Canada's minor/female-only rule are not yours. ⚠️ Do not count on a warning: under the In-House Rules a missing one is an immediate 10-minute misconduct, and a second escalates automatically to a game misconduct. The Elite League warns first and then gives a minor — and a player who refuses to put it right climbs its Casebook's equipment ladder: a misconduct for returning to the ice without making the change, a game misconduct the third time.

Before your first shift, ask your league whether your age group is checking — and until you have an answer, do not hit anyone. Neither the IIHF rulebook nor the In-House Rules sets a checking age for British hockey; your competition's own Rules of Competition does, and the answer differs league by league. In the four IHUK Rules of Competition this page rests on — junior, U10, NIHL Division 1 and 2, and the WNIHL — junior U10 and U12 are non-checking, U14 upward is checking, NIHL Division 1 and 2 is checking, and the WNIHL is non-checking — and if you play up an age group or into the NIHL, it is that game's line you play under. They do not settle the EIHL, BUIHA university hockey, NIHL National, the PNIHL, the SNL or other Scottish domestic hockey outside the IHUK junior structure. ⚠️ And "IHUK runs my league" is not the test — IHUK's own In-House Rules reach NIHL National, the SNL and BUIHA Varsity too, and none of those four documents does. So ask the league you actually play in, not the body above it.

Play as though your first major ends your night, even as an adult and even with nobody hurt. IIHF Rule 20.4 automatically ejects on a major for any of twenty listed infractions — checking from behind, cross-checking, slashing, hooking, high-sticking and a check to the head among them — where the NHL needs an injury on several equivalents and generally a third major. Do not calibrate your expectations on NHL hockey.

Once you have taken one misconduct, play the rest of the game as though the next one ends it. IIHF Rule 20.4 ejects on a second misconduct as well as on a second major, and under the In-House Rules misconducts come from your kit as well as from fouls: a missing neck guard, a chin-strap gap wider than one finger once your team has been warned for one, playing on after your helmet comes off — and a dive, which is a minor plus a 10-minute misconduct.

Keep your wingers out of the faceoff circle until the puck drops, and have a second player ready to take the draw. Under the In-House Rules the linesperson replaces your centre for almost any violation — a winger's included — except on the draw after an icing, and the IIHF's own 2026/27 book, which the Elite League plays, replaces the centre for a teammate's encroachment on most draws too.

If you play U12 in Britain, play on without waiting for an icing or offside whistle, and clear the zone the moment the official calls your team out. IHUK's Junior Rules of Competition puts U12 on a running clock with no icing calls, lines changing on a 60-second buzzer, and a minor of three minutes — four in a four-line game — served on your own line's shifts. ⚠️ An offside does not stop play there, but that is not permission to stay in the zone: not clearing quickly is a delay-of-game penalty. U10 is different again, and U14 upward is the ordinary full-ice, stop-clock IIHF game.

Overview

If you play in Britain, your rule book is the IIHF's. Every level of the game here runs on it — the National Ice Hockey League, the recreational and junior game across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, women's hockey, university hockey and the GB national teams, and the Elite League too, whose own Casebook was obtained for this document on 22 September 2026 and states that for every rule the Casebook does not itself mention, "the official 2026 - 2027 IIHF Rulebook and IIHF Situation Handbook will serve as the official ruling." Almost all hockey writing in English is written to NHL rules and so describes somebody else's game: wherever it flags an IIHF difference, that flag is yours; wherever it flags USA Hockey or Hockey Canada, it is not.

Seven things set British hockey apart. Five of them are in the rule books. Two are questions neither rule book answers and your competition's own regulations do. The first is the sharpest difference between Britain and North America:

Wear a neck laceration protector every time you go on the ice — it is mandatory for every player, adults included — "mandatory for all players in all IIHF categories and IHUK/EIH/SIH competitions", covering "as much of the neck as possible". Under the In-House Rules, which govern the NIHL, the SNL, women's hockey, the recreational and junior game and university hockey, failing to wear one is an immediate 10-minute misconduct with no warning, a second offence escalates to a game misconduct, and England Ice Hockey extends the requirement to "all on ice activities", practices included. Assume no warning wherever you play: the In-House Rules and England Ice Hockey's Rules & Regulations disagree on whether one is given, nothing published resolves it, and the strict reading costs you nothing. The Elite League does warn first: its own Casebook keeps the IIHF's warning-then-minor tier, and extends the requirement to warm-ups and practice sessions — but the minor is not the ceiling, because the same Casebook's equipment ladder takes a player who refuses the change to a minor for Delay of Game, a misconduct for returning to the ice without making it, and a game misconduct the third time. USA Hockey exempts adults and Hockey Canada's rule reaches only minor and female hockey — neither exemption is yours. And if it comes off during play you must leave the ice, and you may not retrieve it.

Ask your league whether your age group is checking before you hit anyone, because the answer is not in the rule book — it is in your competition's Rules of Competition, and only your own league's settles it for you. Neither the IIHF book nor the In-House Rules sets a checking age, and the North American lines are not in force and do not transfer. Four IHUK Rules of Competition were read for this document — the junior, U10, NIHL Division 1 and 2 and WNIHL editions for 2026-27 — and what they set is this: junior U10 and U12 are non-checking and U14, U16 and U19 are checking; NIHL Division 1 and 2 is checking; WNIHL is non-checking at U16 and senior. ⚠️ The line goes with the game you are dressed for, not your birthday: the Junior Rules of Competition let a junior play up one age group, so a player of U12 age dressed for U14 hockey is in a checking game, and from 16 — 15 with approval — a junior may play up into the NIHL, where Divisions 1 and 2 check. In women's hockey the IIHF book also draws a contact line of its own, at Rule 101.1: you may hold your ground once you have established your position, and two players racing for the puck may "push and lean into each other" while the puck stays the only object — but any step or glide into an opponent is at least a minor for an illegal hit, and so is using the boards to take her out of the play, push her into them or pin her there. ⚠️ Those four documents are the whole of what is settled here. They do not reach the EIHL, BUIHA university hockey, NIHL National, the PNIHL, the SNL or other Scottish domestic competitions outside the IHUK junior structure. ⚠️ Do not read "IHUK runs my league" as the answer either — IHUK's In-House Rules apply to NIHL National, the SNL and BUIHA Varsity as well, and none of these four Rules of Competition covers any of them. For any of those, ask your league before you hit anyone, and until you have an answer, do not. Body Contact and Battles §If you play in Britain quotes each one and sets out how a competition regulation sits alongside two silent rule books.

If you play U12, play on without waiting for a whistle, because neither rule book describes your game — and the same kind of document answers that too. IHUK's Junior Rules of Competition makes U12 "Full ice, non-checking, running clock" and sends the rest of the format to its Appendix D, where no icing is called, an offside does not stop play, the lines change on a 60-second buzzer, and a minor is three minutes — four in a four-line game — served on your own line's shifts. ⚠️ An offside not stopping play does not mean you may stay in the zone — the official calls your team out, and not clearing it quickly is a delay-of-game penalty. U10 is different again — cross-ice or half-ice — and U14 and above is the ordinary full-ice, stop-clock IIHF game. It is all set out in §U12 is a different game, and neither British rule book says so.

Keep playing and take the referee's call as the call — there is no on-ice video review in EIH or SIHA competition, and no Coach's Challenge either. The Elite League keeps both, so find out which of the two competitions you are in. Video is still used after the final whistle for supplementary discipline, which can reach incidents nobody penalised at the time.

Keep your wingers out of the circle until the puck drops, because your centre is replaced on the draw for almost any faceoff violation — and either centre may put their stick down first. Both are In-House Rule 76, new for 2026-27, and the stick-down order is a departure from the IIHF book rather than a copy of it. ⚠️ Neither half of that Rule 76 reaches the Elite League — the In-House Rules never name it, and its own Casebook writes no Rule 76 at all — so in an EIHL game expect the defending centre's stick to go down first. The wingers still stay out there too — the IIHF's own 2026/27 Rule 76.3 replaces your centre for a teammate's encroachment, on most draws. Faceoffs covers what that changes at the dot.

Go and look at your own rink before you plan anything around its dimensions — it may well be smaller than the rulebook's. The In-House Rules authorise sheets below 56 m × 26 m for all levels, in all fixtures, naming two rinks permitted only up to U16 — and a sheet under that threshold is shorter than the only length the IIHF book recognises, 60 m, and narrower than its 26 m minimum width. No census of British rink dimensions has been published.

Play as though your first major ends your game, adult or not — and once you have one misconduct, as though the next one does. IIHF Rule 20.4 attaches an automatic game misconduct to a major for any of twenty infractions on its automatic-ejection table, including checking from behind, cross-checking, slashing, hooking, high-sticking, slew-footing, clipping and an illegal check to the head, and unlike the NHL it requires no injury for any of them. This is the rule most likely to catch a player who learned the game watching the NHL, where the residual count is a third major and the IIHF's is a second. The same rule ejects on a second misconduct, and under the In-House Rules those come from your kit as well as from fouls: a missing neck guard, a chin-strap gap wider than one finger once your team has been warned for one, playing on after your helmet comes off — and a dive, which they price at a minor plus a 10-minute misconduct.

On top of the IIHF book sits a short layer of local amendment:

The In-House Rules say so in terms. Their Introduction reads: "IHUK and the British Universities Ice Hockey Association (BUIHA) adopt the latest IIHF Official Rule Book (Version 1.1, published July 2025) as the foundation for the rules of the game to be applied in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (the Home Countries)."

Ask your league which IIHF edition its officials are working from, and where the two editions differ, plan around the stricter reading. ⚠️ The In-House Rules contradict themselves about which edition that is, and nothing published settles it. Their cover points to "the Current IIHF Rule Book"; their Introduction names "Version 1.1, published July 2025", which is the 2025/26 book — yet also calls that book "the latest", when the true latest, the 2026/27 edition, actually carries the lower version number, Version 1.0, June 2026. So the cover and the Introduction point at different books. The differences that matter most change what a foul costs you — most sharply on fighting and on high-sticking — and §Which IIHF edition you are playing, and where the two differ sets out every difference that has been checked.

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Who governs what

England Ice Hockey (EIH) governs the game in England and Wales — its own Rules & Regulations say so at 1.1, 3.1 and 17.1. It was called the English Ice Hockey Association, and you will still see "EIHA" everywhere — on club sites, in league names, in older documents. Same body.

The Scottish Ice Hockey Association (SIHA) governs Scotland, and shares the same In-House Rules document with EIH. You will meet it under two names in the same document: SIHA in the rules themselves, and Scottish Ice Hockey (SIH) in their Introduction and in the phrase "IHUK/EIH/SIH competitions". Same body.

Ice Hockey UK (IHUK) is the national governing body recognised by the IIHF, and runs the GB national teams. Since the merger it is also "[t]he governing body for ice hockey in the United Kingdom" in the In-House Rules' own words, it is IHUK that adopts the IIHF book for domestic play, and games are described there as IHUK-sanctioned where the previous edition said EIH-sanctioned.

The British Universities Ice Hockey Association (BUIHA) runs university hockey and adopts the same In-House Rules. It is the one body named alongside IHUK in the 2026-27 Introduction and did not merge into it.

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Which IIHF edition you are playing, and where the two differ

Which IIHF edition these documents quote. Every IIHF rule in this document is the 2025/26 book's (Version 1.1, July 2025) unless flagged otherwise. A 2026/27 edition exists and, where it has been checked, the differences are real — its Rules 76.4, 76.6 and 76.7, for instance, turn a faceoff violation from a warning into the offending centre's replacement (see Faceoffs). Only a short list of rules has been checked against the 2026/27 book — Rules 1.7, 20.4, 20.5, 28.1, 46, 60, 63.2, 64, 69, 70, 76, 82.2, 87.1 and Appendix IV — the rest of that edition has not been read for this document. ⚠️ Treat every unflagged rule here as the 2025/26 position and check the current book before you rely on a detail.

The renumbering is the trap, and Rule 46 (fighting) is where it bites. Every Rule 46 number in this document is the 2025/26 book's; the 2026/27 book reorders the whole rule, so the same number can mean something else entirely — most sharply third player in, which is 46.7 in the 2025/26 book and 46.14 in 2026/27, where 46.7 becomes fighting off the playing surface instead. The rest of the moves: instigator 46.3→46.10, aggressor 46.4→46.2, sucker punch 46.5→46.13, altercation 46.2→46.3, clearing the area of a fight 46.8→46.4, fighting outside the periods 46.9→46.8, fighting off the playing surface 46.11→46.7, helmets 46.12→46.6, fighting prior to the drop of the puck 46.10→46.9, jerseys 46.13→46.11. The new order does not track the old one. ⚠️ Look a fighting rule up by its heading, not its number, and find out which book your officials are carrying. The Elite League's own Casebook numbers two of its five Rule 46 clauses wrong against the 2026/27 book it adopts, and prints 46.2 twice (§Fighting) — so the heading is the only reliable handle even inside a single document.

Appendix IV is renumbered too, and the 2026/27 book has no Table 6 at all. The 2025/26 book's Tables 5, 6 and 7 are merged there into a single Table 5, with "MAJOR ONLY" and "MAJOR + GMP" columns covering the same twenty automatic and five discretionary entries, plus two fighting rows the old tables did not carry. Every entry named below is still on it. The merge also shifts every later table down by two — the 2025/26 book's Table 9, 16 and 18 are the 2026/27 book's Table 7, 14 and 16. A table number only resolves in the book it came from — always name the edition.

Several Rule 46 clauses changed in substance too, and the ones that matter most widen what you are exposed to. 46.1 inverts the default. The 2025/26 rule says a willing combatant "may" be ejected; the 2026/27 rule makes the major-plus-automatic-game-misconduct "the standard penalty" for anyone who fights. Ejection stopped being something the referee may do and became the starting point. The one discretion that widened runs the other way — a player judged to be defending against an aggressor or instigator can have the game misconduct waived. But the third player in waiver narrowed: the old rule waived it whenever a game misconduct was already being imposed in the original altercation; the new one waives it only where an aggressor penalty is being imposed in the original altercation and the referee judges the intervening player was "intervening to stop the ongoing altercation with an 'unwilling combatant' and not to start a secondary altercation." ⚠️ So stepping in to break up a fight costs you more under the new book, not less — and if the player being set upon is a willing fighter rather than an unwilling combatant, there is no waiver to reach for at all.

And the instigator test now reaches back further than one game. The 2025/26 criteria look at "conduct in retaliation to a prior game incident" and "obvious retribution for a previous incident in the game"; the 2026/27 rule widens both — "a prior game (or season) incident" and "a previous incident in the game or season". It also adds a limb the old rule has no counterpart for: an instigator penalty "in the final five (5) minutes of regulation time or at any time in overtime" exposes the player to Rule 28 supplementary discipline, and "the player's coach shall also be subject to potential supplemental discipline under Rule 28." ⚠️ So a grudge carried from a fixture months ago can be what makes you the instigator — a minor, a major and an automatic game misconduct — and in the last five minutes it reaches your coach as well as you.

Two smaller moves: the persisting after being told to stop, or resisting a linesperson limb shifts to its own clause (46.5) and is softened from a major-plus-misconduct that the 2025/26 book already left "at the discretion of the Referee" with a floor of "at least" that penalty, to "a misconduct or game misconduct penalty"; and sucker-punching's injury test narrows from a punch that "could cause" injury to one that "causes" it — though a sucker-punch is still a major plus an automatic game misconduct either way, so nothing here changes what it costs you. And the 2025/26 book — Britain's — carries the test that decides whether you are a fighter or not, in Rule 46.6 Defender – Unwilling Combatant: a player who "defends themself with a 'few punches'" is an unwilling combatant, while "a Player who retaliates to being punched will be assessed at least a minor penalty ('Roughing') or a major penalty ('Fighting', without a game misconduct penalty), if the criteria for 'fighting back' with a few punches is not fulfilled." ⚠️ So punching back beyond a few defensive punches is what moves you up a tier. ⚠️ The 2026/27 book deletes the Defender – Unwilling Combatant heading — 46.6 is HELMETS there — and the protection that survives is weaker. The sentence "'unwilling combatant' and the automatic game misconduct penalty may be waived at the discretion of the referee" appears in four separate clauses instead — but the test is gone: "few punches", "retaliates" and "fighting back" return zero in that edition. So where 2025/26 said a defender shall be considered an unwilling combatant against "an Aggressor, an Instigator / Initiator or a fighter", the new book leaves it discretionary and names only an aggressor or an instigator. Read Rule 46 in the edition your competition actually plays.

Rule 60 (high-sticking) also changed in substance, in two directions at once. The 2025/26 book calls a high stick one carried above the opponent's shoulders; the 2026/27 book instead requires contact above the shoulders, provided the shoulders struck are at waist height or higher — narrower. But the double minor moved the other way: the 2025/26 book requires the stick to have been carried above the shoulders before contact causes injury — and both editions define that as "in the manner of drawing blood or otherwise", so a bloodless facial injury still reaches the double minor; the 2026/27 book drops that carry requirement and reaches injuring contact on the neck, face or head anywhere above the struck player's waist. ⚠️ So under the new book, a stick that was never carried high can still be the four-minute double minor if it injures someone. Plan around both halves at once: keep your stick below every opponent's shoulders, because contact up there is at least a minor in both books and a reckless one can be a major with an automatic game misconduct (60.4), and never treat a low stick as safe near a head. The IIHF's own published list of changes mentions only the narrower half, not the one that widens your exposure — so do not rely on that list either. Shooting sets out the full high-sticking ladder, in both editions and against the other three books.

And the height that decides it is measured on the player who was struck, not on you. The 2026/27 Situation Handbook's Situation 60.13 rules that a stick barely above waist height is still a high-sticking penalty if it strikes an opponent bent over the puck in the face — the key, in the Handbook's own words, being that the player "was hit in the neck/face/head with the opponent's stick, at or above the height of the waist of the player being struck." It is where the contact landed on them, not how high you carried your stick. And that ruling is 2026/27 only — the 2025/26 handbook stops at Situation 60.12 and publishes no interpretation of this case, so on Britain's own edition there is no published ruling either way. ⚠️ Lift a stick low on the shaft, well below the bottom hand, and not at a player bent over the puck.

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The amendments that change what you do

These are the ones worth knowing before you play. Everything not listed here is enforced in line with the IIHF book.

Neck protection is mandatory, for everyone — and the In-House Rules give no warning

This is the sharpest difference between Britain and North America, and it is the one most likely to catch out a reader who has learned the game from North American material.

Under the In-House Rules, "[a] neck laceration protector is mandatory for all players in all IIHF categories and IHUK/EIH/SIH competitions", and the bullet under it sets three requirements, not one: "Protectors must be worn correctly, unaltered, and must cover as much of the neck as possible." Worn correctly and unaltered each stand on their own — a guard cut down to fit, or slung loose below the chin, does not satisfy the rule however much of it you are carrying. Enforcement is unusually hard:

• No warning is given. Failing to wear a neck laceration protector is an immediate 10-minute misconduct penalty.
• If your neck protector comes off during play, you must leave the ice and may not retrieve it.
• A second neck-protector violation by the same player is another 10-minute misconduct, which automatically escalates to a game misconduct.
• The neck-protector requirement is not only a game rule. England Ice Hockey's Rules & Regulations 24.3 makes it "mandatory that all players at all levels use an approved Ice Hockey Neck Guard/Protector whilst participating in all on ice activities" — practices and stick-and-puck included.
• Somebody is now required to check your neck protector before the warm-up. In-House Rule 5.4 puts a pre-warm-up equipment check on the coach or manager, who "must verify helmet/facemask fit, chin-strap tightness and neck laceration protection are worn per manufacturer instructions and these rules". The neck protector was added to that check for 2026-27; the check itself is not new.
• Two of IHUK's Rules of Competition carry the neck guard onto the bench. The junior and WNIHL documents each add their own equipment section on top of the playing rules — "Neck-laceration protector: mandatory and unaltered from manufacturer spec" — and then reach players who are not playing: "Non-playing junior players may be on the bench only if wearing, at minimum: helmet with full-face protection, neck guard, and upper-body protection. Otherwise, they must leave the bench." The WNIHL document says the same of non-playing U16 players, and the junior one closes the age argument outright in one division: "All U19 National Division players must wear full face cages and neck guards for the full season, regardless of being 18+."
• None of the four Rules of Competition read for this document extends the neck guard to training, though. The junior, U10, NIHL 1 and 2 and WNIHL documents were each searched for it: the junior and WNIHL equipment sections are written around games and the bench, and the U10 and NIHL documents carry no neck-protection provision at all. So outside England and Wales, where Rules & Regulations 24.3 covers "all on ice activities", and outside the Elite League, whose Casebook names practice, ⚠️ nothing read for this document puts the neck guard on the player at a training session. And the one IHUK document whose scope explicitly reaches training writes the duty for the coach instead. The Coaching Regulations 2026-2027, obtained 22 September 2026, scope §9 Team Requirements to "junior and senior teams, including practices, games, camps, and hockey schools", and §9.3 makes "an ice hockey neck guard, properly secured and worn as per the manufacturer’s speciation, not altered" [sic] mandatory for the coach’s own on-ice kit — while the coach’s stated duty toward players names "approved helmets and face protection, sticks, and gloves" and no neck guard. That is an asymmetry between two documents, not a permission, and it is a searched answer rather than a gap. Wear it anyway.

The mandate itself is IIHF Rule 9.12, which requires a neck laceration protector "[f]or all Players in all categories of IIHF Competition" — so it travels with you to any IIHF competition, not just British ones. What the In-House Rules change is the enforcement — and only in senior hockey. IIHF 9.12 gives "a warning by the Referee" and then a minor penalty, where the In-House Rules give no warning and a 10-minute misconduct. In junior hockey the gap is only the warning: 9.12 routes junior violations to Rule 202.7 (men's junior) and 102.7 (women's), where the ladder is a warning to the team through the coach and then "a ten minute (10') misconduct penalty" — the same penalty the In-House Rules impose. So against the IIHF book the domestic rule is stricter for adults and, for juniors, differs only in dropping the warning. Either way it is stricter, never more lenient.

The Elite League writes its own Rule 9.12, and it carries the neck-guard requirement into practice as well as into games. The EIHL Casebook's Rule 9.12 repeats the IIHF mandate almost word for word but scopes it to "all categories of EIHL Competition", keeps the IIHF's softer tier rather than the domestic one — "after warning by the Referee, a minor penalty shall be imposed", not the In-House Rules' no-warning 10-minute misconduct — ⚠️ and then adds a sentence the IIHF's own Rule 9.12 does not carry in either edition — in the EIHL the neck guard goes on for warm-ups and practice too: "This requirement also applies during warm-ups and practice sessions." ⚠️ And put it right the moment you are told, because the minor is not the ceiling. The Casebook's own Rule 9.5 names "neck laceration protection not being properly worn" among the things officials act on, and its equipment ladder runs on from there: refuse and it is a minor for Delay of Game, return to the ice without making the change and it is a misconduct, and "[s]hould this happen a third time, the Player shall be issued a game misconduct penalty."

Warm-up was already covered for every player by the IIHF book itself, in a different rule — Rule 9.5 requires that "[t]he complete protective equipment must be worn during the game and during 'pre-game warm-up'", and Rule 5.6 that "[d]uring warm-up on the ice, all protective equipment must be properly worn" — but the Casebook writes its own Rule 9.5 and its own Rule 5.6, and neither of them carries either of those sentences: the Casebook's 9.5 sets the Elite League's mouth guard, visor, jewellery and neck-protection requirements, and reproduces the IIHF's own escalation for refusing to change a non-conforming item word for word — so that ladder is not an Elite League interpretation at all, and it binds every British player (§Equipment that does not meet the rules has its own ladder); and its 5.6 governs crossing the centre red line in warm-up and a warm-up that runs from 40 minutes to 20 minutes on the clock. Whether the IIHF's warm-up wording survives unamended for an EIHL game is a question neither document answers — and it does not change what you do, because the Casebook's own Rule 9.12 names warm-ups itself. So practice is the part that is genuinely new, and it leaves an Elite League player where an England or Wales player already stands under Rules & Regulations 24.3. And nothing is loosened by what the Casebook's Rule 9.12 leaves out: the "must not be modified or alternated in any way" clause that IIHF Rule 9.12 carries is not in it, but the Casebook states it a few rules earlier, at Rule 9.5 — "The Neck Laceration Protector must be properly worn and must not be modified or alternated in any way." ⚠️ And the Casebook says in terms that the warm-up is refereed. Its Rule 86.6 puts "the standby referee who oversees the warmup" over it, and provides that "[r]eferees are authorised to call all penalties provided for in the rule book from the start of warm-up time until 30 minutes after the end of the game, if they see the offence take place." The same rule's limb (ii) reads "[a]ny violations of game rules that occur during the warmup cannot be enforced by on-ice officials because they are not on the ice to witness the violations first-hand, but these may be reviewed after the game by the proper authorities" — and the Casebook's Rule 28 says who those are in an Elite League game: "Where there is reference to 'The Proper Authorities' within the IIHF Rulebook, this shall refer to the EIHL Department of Player Safety (DOPS) and EIHL Hockey Operations." ⚠️ That answer is the League's own and reaches nobody else. In a competition the In-House Rules reach, they give the equivalent without using the phrase: their Rule 28 sends supplementary discipline to the Discipline Policy of the home association, "EIH or SIHA", and a Supplementary Discipline section near the end of the rules lets the IHUK Department of Player Safety or the SIHA Disciplinary Committee act on offences "before, during, or after a game". That limb is about offences nobody sees, not about which rules apply, so the Casebook's own answer is that a referee who sees an unworn neck guard in the warm-up can call it there and then. Practice is the part nothing settles: no Casebook rule says who enforces Rule 9.12 at a session with no officials, and this document does not guess. Wear it either way.

University hockey is not named in the domestic list, and is not exempt. In-House Rule 9.12 reaches "all IIHF categories and IHUK/EIH/SIH competitions" and does not mention the BUIHA. But the BUIHA adopts the IIHF Rule Book alongside IHUK, and the mandate is the IIHF's, so it binds in a university game whatever the domestic list says. The In-House Rules are also the "overriding interpretation of how the IIHF Rule Book is to be applied domestically", and that is what the BUIHA adopted — so expect the domestic enforcement as well. Their BUIHA section's only equipment provision is the half-visor minimum, and nothing in it lifts the neck-guard requirement. ⚠️ Neither edition says in terms whether the 10-minute misconduct reaches a BUIHA fixture; wearing the guard settles the question either way.

The two British documents do not agree on the warning, and nothing published resolves it. The In-House Rules 9.12 say "No warning will be given for failing to wear a neck guard". But England Ice Hockey's Rules & Regulations 24.6 — three clauses below the equipment rules quoted above — sets out a warning scheme: "This counts as a warning to the player and bench, for any further violation of rule either 24.3, 24.4 or 24.5 misconduct penalties will be assessed to the offending player and also potential team head coach in the event of repeat offending." The In-House Rules are the current playing-rule amendments and the Rules & Regulations on disk are the 2024-25 edition, which is why the In-House Rules are followed throughout here. ⚠️ Wear the neck guard and assume no warning — that is the conservative reading and it costs nothing. This is the same pattern as the trapezoid: a second British document saying something different, and no published statement of which governs.

Compare North America, where the requirement is narrower: USA Hockey Rule 304(g) requires it in all classifications except adults, and Hockey Canada Rule 3.6(c) covers players registered in minor and female hockey. A British adult reading only those would reasonably conclude the requirement is not theirs. It is.

The In-House Rules bar on-ice video review — the Elite League keeps it

In-House Rule 37 reads: "On-ice video review is not available in EIH or SIHA competition and may not be used by referees, official scorers, timekeepers, or any other game official." The In-House Rules then repeat that bar in nine further provisions, spread across eight other rules: double minor penalties (18.4), the official scorer (33.2), the game timekeeper (34.7), the penalty timekeeper (35.8), high-sticking (60.3), goaltender interference (69.1), goals (78.5 and 78.6) and puck out of bounds (85.7). Eight of the nine repeat Rule 37's opening clause verbatim and add a cross-reference — "On-ice video review is not available in EIH or SIHA competition (see Rule 37)" — while 78.6 alone words it differently: "Video review is not in use in EIH or SIHA competition (see Rule 37)".

The Coach's Challenge goes with it. In-House Rule 38: "As on-ice video review is not available (see Rule 37), a Coach's Challenge is not permitted in EIH or SIHA competition." There is nothing to challenge with, so there is no challenge.

Practically: the referee's call on the ice is the call. Where you read or hear about a decision being reviewed on video, that is the NHL and international tournament game — and the Elite League, which keeps both. The EIHL Casebook's Rule 37.1 provides that "EIHL video review operations can either be conducted in the arena or remotely from the EIHL Situation Room where appropriate", and its Rule 38.5 that "[c]oaches may initiate a challenge at any time throughout the game Regulation time or at any time during Overtime." ⚠️ That is the League's game, not yours either. If you play under EIH or SIHA, the In-House bar above is what applies to you, and the two British answers are opposite ones.

"On-ice" is doing work in that sentence, though. Video is still used after the game. In-House Rule 28 says a supplementary-discipline case may be opened either through an official match report or through "[t]he defined video review process". And a separate, unnumbered Supplementary Discipline section later in the same document — after Appendix 2, not part of Rule 28 — adds that the disciplinary body may investigate any incident after the final whistle "regardless of whether such offences were penalised by the Referee at the time." Nothing is reviewed during the game; that is not the same as nothing being reviewed.

The Elite League publishes its own goaltender-interference criteria

Keep out of the blue paint, and if the goalie is trying to set himself, give ground. The EIHL Casebook carries an "EIHL Addition to the IIHF Rule Book" on Rule 69, listing the "3 main criteria to consider/answer in making the appropriate decision": "1. Is the goaltender able to play his position? If he is contacted does he have time to recover? 2. Was the contact initiated by the defensive player or the cause of a player from the opposing team? 3. Was the contact made inside (or outside) of the crease? Contact in the blue paint area calls for disallowing a goal."

Read that third answer for what it says: ⚠️ it is what is enough to wipe a goal out, not a line beyond which contact is free. Note what the Casebook calls it: an addition to the IIHF book, giving criteria to weigh rather than a rule to replace one — so IIHF Rule 69 is still what decides the call, and 69.2 tells the referee to weigh the contact above the place it happened: "In exercising their judgment, the Referee should give more significant consideration to the degree and nature of the relevant contact with the goalkeeper than to the exact location of the goalkeeper at the time of the contact." Its 69.4 disallows a goal for any non-incidental contact an attacking player initiates with a goalkeeper outside the crease, and says so in terms: "A goalkeeper is not 'fair game' just because they are outside the goal crease. The appropriate penalty should be assessed in every case where an attacking Player makes 'unnecessary contact' with the goalkeeper." ⚠️ And that penalty is yours whether anything goes in or not — 69.2 prices "intentional or deliberate" contact with a goalkeeper at a minor or a major, "whether or not the goalkeeper is inside or outside the goal crease, and whether or not a goal is scored". You do not even have to touch him — a goalkeeper who has played the puck outside his crease and is then "prevented from returning to their goal crease area due to the deliberate actions of an attacking Player" can be penalised for goalkeeper interference on that alone.

Nor is the crease only the paint: Rule 1.7 says "[t]he marked line belongs to the Goal Crease", and the crease area "extends vertically until the top of the crossbar". Rules 1.7, 69.3 and 69.4 say the same thing in the 2025/26 and 2026/27 books, so none of this turns on which edition your competition plays.

If you play under EIH or SIHA, this is not your document — the IIHF rule runs unamended there, and with no on-ice video review and no Coach's Challenge, a net-front call is decided once, on the ice. The Casebook is also a rolling document: its Preamble says each update is "sent by email, on the EIHL web site and in print" during the season, so a copy read in the autumn is not necessarily what is in force by February.

Rinks are often smaller than the book says

IIHF Rule 1.2 specifies a sheet "60m long and 26m to 30m wide" — note that 30 m is the top of a range, not the standard. The In-House Rules provide that "[r]inks with a non-standard playing surface (below 56 m × 26 m) are authorised by the NGB for all levels of hockey", with two named rinks permitted only up to U16 — Sutton in England and Coatbridge in Scotland.

Both the list of named rinks and the scope of that In-House authorisation changed for 2026-27. The 2025-26 edition named a third rink, Limekilns Road in Scotland, and carried the scope line "This rule applies to all EIH and SIHA fixtures." The 2026-27 edition names only the two and reads "This rule applies to all fixtures." So the authorisation now reaches university hockey too, where before it did not. The Elite League is not mentioned anywhere in the In-House Rules, so nothing here establishes what applies there.

That threshold sits outside IIHF Rule 1.2 altogether: the book fixes the length at 60 m and makes 26 m its minimum width, so a rink below 56 m × 26 m is short of the book on both counts. Rink Map covers the dimensions and the markings.

This matters more than it sounds. Time and Space explains what rink size does to the game: on a smaller sheet the distances shrink, the angles do not, and everything arrives sooner. Check your rink before you assume the geometry in any document applies to it.

Facial protection and helmet fit

• Women's hockey only: the In-House Rules place "Players may wear a half visor only from the start of the season following their 18th birthday" under Rule 102 – Women's Hockey Specific Equipment Rules. Read it as a relaxation, not a restriction: IIHF Rule 102.1 requires "full-face protection (full-visor, or cage facial protection)" for every player in the women's Senior category, and this reads as permitting a half visor instead once the player is past that birthday. ⚠️ That is the natural reading and nothing published states it. The whole of In-House Rule 102 is that one sentence, identical in the 2025-26 and 2026-27 editions, and it never says it displaces 102.1 — which closes "Players without the mentioned protection are not allowed to participate in a game." A full face satisfies both readings, so wear one if you want certainty. Nothing here advises dropping to a half visor. And in IHUK junior hockey the question does not arise: its Junior Rules of Competition put every junior from U10 to U19 in full-face protection, and the U19 National Division in "full face cages … regardless of being 18+".
• All players in SIHA Recreational or SIHA University hockey must wear at minimum a half visor, "regardless of their date of birth" (Rule 9.7).
• The women's half-visor clause and the SIHA half-visor minimum do not conflict: a woman under 18 wears full-face protection. A half visor is a floor, and full-face protection clears it. Scottish recreational hockey does not reach the question anyway — no player under 18 may play recreational hockey in Scotland.
• University hockey has its own clause too. The In-House Rules' section on BUIHA games reads "all players in BUIHA games are required to wear a half visor as a minimum." So if you play BUIHA — English and Scottish university hockey — the half-visor minimum is yours regardless of which clause you reach first. ⚠️ The half visor is a minimum, not a ceiling, so it never lowers anyone's floor. BUIHA itself has no under-18 players — "players under 18 are not permitted to participate" — but a non-BUIHA opponent in a challenge match can field one, and that player is still under the IIHF's Under-18 full-face rule. A half visor does not clear it for them.
• Face cages are mandatory in junior hockey in England and Wales — England Ice Hockey's Rules & Regulations 24.5, 2024-25 edition: "Face cages for all junior hockey games are mandatory". IHUK's own Junior Rules of Competition 2026-27 also put full-face protection — "cage or full visor" — on every IHUK junior player from U10 to U19, and U19 players "must wear a full cage/ full face at all times during games." The clubs in its league tables are English and Welsh, and nothing read here says whether it reaches a Scottish or Northern Irish junior. Where neither reaches you, the floor is the looser IIHF one: full-face protection of either kind at Under-18 and, in men's hockey, a visor above it. The In-House Rules impose no cage mandate anywhere. ⚠️ So as a junior skater anywhere in Britain, 18 or over included, wear a cage — it satisfies every rule here; a full visor meets the IIHF's Under-18 rule but not England Ice Hockey's cage rule. IHUK's junior rules point to that rule too: their equipment section applies the IIHF rules "with additions set out below and in IHUK/EIH Rules & Regulations – Skaters' Equipment", the section the cage rule sits in, even though their own list says "cage or full visor".
• The gap between chin or neck and chin strap must not exceed 2.5 cm — about one finger. The first offence sends the player to the bench to adjust and is written as a "team warning"; the second is a 10-minute misconduct to whoever commits it. Read that warning as your team's, not yours: once any teammate has been sent off to fix a strap, your own first loose strap can be the misconduct. The IIHF book beneath this only requires the strap be "properly fastened," with no measurement — the figure is British. USA Hockey uses the same one-finger test, so it is not uniquely strict; don't assume the British number is the strict end if you play elsewhere.
• If your helmet comes off during play, you must leave the ice immediately. In-House Rule 9.8: "If a player's helmet becomes detached during play, they must immediately leave the ice. Failure to comply will be penalised, with a misconduct penalty, under Rule 12 – Illegal Equipment." That is the exact counterpart of the neck-guard rule above, and ⚠️ playing on bare-headed is not a choice the rule leaves you — it is a misconduct, and two misconducts in a game end it under IIHF Rule 20.4.
• A full cage must have the chin cup fitted and in contact with the chin, "within the helmet's J-clips"; loose or dangling cages and straps are not permitted. Enforcement has its own ladder under In-House Rule 12: the referee sends you off the ice to adjust; returning with the same violation is a "Minor Penalty – Illegal Equipment"; and subsequent violations by the same player are 10-minute misconducts, the second of which is a game misconduct.
• A cage and a helmet that were not sold to go together are Dangerous Equipment. In-House Rule 12: "Helmet–facemask combinations must match manufacturer sizing. Mis-sized combinations are considered Dangerous Equipment, and the player will be removed until corrected." This is the rule that catches second-hand kit, so check the manufacturer's sizing before you put a cage on a helmet you already own — see Equipment.

Equipment that does not meet the rules has its own ladder

This one is nobody's amendment. It is IIHF Rule 9.5, word for word the same in the 2025/26 book the In-House Rules name and in the 2026/27 book, and it reaches every British player — the Elite League included, because the EIHL Casebook's own Rule 9.5 reproduces it verbatim rather than replacing it. Where the referee judges that a piece of your equipment does not meet the IIHF regulations, they instruct you to change or remove it, and then:

• You and your team are warned to adjust it. After the warning, "all Players on that team wearing such equipment shall be penalized in accordance with Rule 12 – Illegal Equipment."
• If you refuse, it is a minor penalty — and the rule labels it "Delay of Game".
• If you return to the ice without making the change, a misconduct.
• "Should this happen a third time, the Player shall be issued a game misconduct penalty."

Read that escalation as conditional, not as a count. ⚠️ What moves you up it is refusing, and then coming back out unchanged — not a third equipment offence of any kind. IIHF Rule 12.1 carries the same three steps in its own words for protective equipment worn outside the uniform, with the minor labelled "Illegal Equipment" instead.

The In-House Rules do not amend Rule 9.5 — both editions were searched on text with spacing and line breaks stripped, and neither carries the rule number or that escalation. So the Introduction's default governs it: "Unless otherwise stated, all rules will be enforced in line with the IIHF Rule Book." What they do amend is the step below. Rule 12's cage-and-visor ladder is domestic (§Facial protection and helmet fit), and so is one limb of Rule 9.5's own subject matter: under the heading Jersey Requirements (Rule 9.3 Emphasis), "Jerseys must cover all relevant protective equipment (e.g. elbow pads)", and the price is "First offence: Warning" then "Subsequent offences: 10-minute Misconduct Penalty." IIHF 9.5 makes an uncovered elbow pad a minor on the second violation; domestically it is a 10-minute misconduct. Stricter again, and two misconducts in a game end it.

One thing Rule 9.5 governs in the Elite League and nowhere else in Britain: jewellery. The EIHL Casebook's own Rule 9.5 carries a clause headed "Illegal Equipment - Jewelry", and it is flat — "Jewelry cannot be worn, either under a player’s equipment or exposed to the outside of equipment" — with no exemption for adults. No other book read for this document writes a jewellery rule at all: not the In-House Rules in either edition, not England Ice Hockey's Rules & Regulations, not the four IHUK Rules of Competition, and not the IIHF book itself in either edition. The only other rule book read here that writes one is USA Hockey Rule 305(c) — "Except for Adults, no player or goalkeeper shall be permitted on the ice while wearing jewelry unless it is completely covered by equipment or taped to the body" — which is not yours, and which exempts adults in any case. ⚠️ Read that silence as an absence of a written rule, not as a permission. Rule 9.5's power to order you to change or remove a piece of equipment does not need a jewellery clause to reach a ring or a chain, and nothing read here establishes what a British referee outside the Elite League will do about one. ⚠️ Tape it or take it off.

The trapezoid may not be enforced

The IIHF book has a goalkeeper's restricted area (Rule 1.8 for the geometry, 27.7 for the penalty), so on the face of it British hockey has a trapezoid. England Ice Hockey's own Rules & Regulations say otherwise:

England Ice Hockey's Rule 22.3 is the governing body suspending an IIHF rule domestically — and only in its own jurisdiction. England Ice Hockey is the NGB "in England and Wales" (Rules & Regulations 1.1), so 22.3 does not reach Scotland (SIHA), Northern Ireland or BUIHA university hockey. All three sit inside the In-House Rules' territory — since 2026-27 those apply "in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (the Home Countries)", where the 2025-26 edition reached only England and Scotland — and the In-House Rules are silent on the restricted area, their Introduction saying "Unless otherwise stated, all rules will be enforced in line with the IIHF Rule Book." So for a Scottish, Northern Irish or university player IIHF 27.7 reads as live. The Elite League is a separate question, and the League's own Casebook does not suspend the rule: EIHL clubs play in England, and the Motorpoint EIHL Casebook 26-27 — obtained on 22 September 2026 and searched on text with spacing and punctuation stripped — does not mention Rule 27 anywhere. Its Preamble says that "[f]or all rules not mentioned in the EIHL Casebook, the official 2026 - 2027 IIHF Rulebook and IIHF Situation Handbook will serve as the official ruling", so nothing the League publishes takes 27.7 out. Whether England Ice Hockey's Rule 22.3 reaches an EIHL fixture played in England is a question of EIH jurisdiction that no document read here settles. The suspension's stated reason — giving rinks time to repaint — is also why so many British rinks have no trapezoid painted on them; treat an unmarked sheet as a hint rather than a ruling, because 27.7 turns on "the position of the puck", not on the markings.

Play as though it binds, wherever you are. For a goaltender that costs nothing and the alternative is two minutes. For an attacking team the safe assumption runs the other way — plan as though their goalie may come for a dumped puck.

And note what 22.3 does not suspend. It names the "Goalkeepers' Restricted Area" and nothing else. It leaves untouched the separate delay-of-game minor for a goalkeeper who "holds, 'freezes' or plays the puck with their stick, skates or body in such a manner as to deliberately cause a stoppage of play" — a rule that, in its own words, "applies outside of their goal crease area" (IIHF Rule 63.2(I), word-for-word identical in the 2025/26 and 2026/27 editions). Outside the crease means inside the designated area as well as beyond it. So a goaltender who is told the trapezoid is not enforced must not conclude that they are unrestricted behind the net. Where they may play the puck, and what they may do with it once they are there, are two different rules — and only the first of them is suspended. The trigger is the deliberate stoppage — a goaltender who comes out to cut down the angle and covers the puck after making the save is expressly legal (63.2(VI), Note).

Treat this as unsettled. The non-enforcement is in the 2024-2025 edition of the Rules & Regulations. Neither the 2025-26 nor the 2026-27 In-House Rules mention the restricted area at all — both editions were searched for it — so the published playing-rule amendments do not establish whether the suspension still stands. ⚠️ Ask your league. It changes where your goaltender may retrieve a rim, which is a decision they make several times a game.

Under the In-House Rules your centre is replaced for almost any faceoff violation — and either centre may put the stick down first

Two sentences, both new for 2026-27, both under In-House Rule 76 – Face-Offs. The 2025-26 edition had no Rule 76 at all.

On a faceoff violation under In-House Rule 76, the centre goes. "With the exception of face-offs following icings, the linesperson shall immediately replace the centre for all violations." So on any draw except the one following an icing, a violation costs your team its centre for that draw — including a violation your winger commits by stepping into the circle, because it is the centre the rule removes, not the player who moved. ⚠️ Do not read the icing carve-out as a free draw. IHUK does not amend IIHF Rule 76.7, so a second violation by your team on that same draw is still a bench minor — and the In-House sentence says nothing about the "first violation only" limit IIHF 76.4 writes into its own post-icing rule, so treat one attempt as what you have.

Either centre may put their stick down first. "Linespersons must ensure both centres are squared up correctly behind their marks with the whole of their stick blades (not toe or heel) in the white portion of the face-off circle. Either centre can now put their stick down first for a face-off." ⚠️ That is a British departure from the IIHF book, not an IIHF change. IIHF Rule 76.4 gives the order to the defending player at eight of the nine spots and to the visiting player at centre ice — in identical words in the 2025/26 and 2026/27 editions, both checked. Across the Home Countries that order is switched off.

It is not switched off in the Elite League, though, and neither is the blade standard. The In-House Rules never name the EIHL, and the Motorpoint EIHL Casebook 26-27 writes no Rule 76 at all — its Preamble makes "the official 2026 - 2027 IIHF Rulebook and IIHF Situation Handbook" the ruling for everything it does not itself mention. So an EIHL draw runs IIHF Rule 76 unamended: ⚠️ the defending centre's stick goes down first at the eight spots outside centre ice, the visiting centre's at centre ice, and "at least the toe of the blade" in the white is enough — where the In-House amendment asks for the whole blade. A violation still costs an EIHL centre the dot on most draws, but that comes from the IIHF's own 2026/27 book rather than from any British amendment.

Faceoffs covers what both changes do at the dot, and how the British position now sits against the NHL, USA Hockey and Hockey Canada.

Embellishment costs you twelve minutes under the In-House Rules, not two

In-House Rule 64: Embellishment is one line, and it is new for 2026-27: "Adding a misconduct to a minor. The required call is now 2 plus 10."

Under the IIHF book a dive is a minor and nothing more. Rule 64.1 penalises a player who "blatantly dives", "embellishes" a fall or a reaction, or who "feigns an injury" with a minor penalty, and 64.2 says the same of attempting to draw a penalty; the wording is identical in the 2025/26 and 2026/27 editions. The British amendment bolts a 10-minute misconduct onto it.

The Elite League does not. The EIHL Casebook's Rule 64 keeps the plain minor — "A player who embellishes a foul or pretends to have been fouled by an opponent will be assessed a minor penalty" — and puts the extra cost somewhere the scoreboard does not show it: the League's Department of Player Safety "has the ability to fine players in situations where players feign an, embellish, enhance or dive within a game" [sic], "[r]egardless of the call at ice level", and "[t]he fact a player received a 'Diving' penalty within a game by an on-ice official, does not automatically mean a fine will ensue." ⚠️ So a dive costs an Elite League player two minutes and an open question; under the In-House Rules it costs twelve minutes. Two British answers again, and which is yours depends on the competition.

Read "2 plus 10" the way the penalty box does. You sit for twelve minutes. Your team is short-handed for two, not twelve, because a substitute goes to the box and serves the minor while you serve the misconduct (IIHF Rule 22.3). But the misconduct still counts against you: a second misconduct in the same game is an automatic game misconduct under IIHF Rule 20.4, which Rule 22.1 then restates for skaters — "[i]n the event of misconduct penalties to any Players except the goalkeeper". So an embellishment call plus one other misconduct — a missing neck guard, a loose chin strap once your team has been warned for one — ends your night.

A goaltender never sits, and the count catches them anyway — so keep it yourself. A goalkeeper is not sent to the box for a minor or for a misconduct: teammates the coach designates through the captain serve both halves of a "2 plus 10" (IIHF Rules 27.1 and 27.3). You stay in your net and your team is short two, not twelve, exactly as for a skater. But the misconduct is recorded against you, and Rule 20.4 — the rule that actually carries the escalation — is not goalkeeper-scoped: a second misconduct in the game is an automatic game misconduct, and Rule 27.4 then gives your place to a teammate or an available substitute goalkeeper, "allowed the goalkeeper's full equipment." Your margin is the same two misconducts a skater has, with none of the ten minutes in the box to remind you of the first.

A broken stick must be dropped — and the In-House Rules bar carrying it anywhere on the ice

In-House Rule 10.3 is new for 2026-27: "Skating with a broken stick anywhere on the ice is not permitted under IHUK In-House Rules. A player whose stick is broken must drop their stick immediately. Failure to do so will incur a 2min penalty for illegal equipment".

The IIHF book already required a broken stick to be dropped — its Rule 10.3 lets a player "participate in the game provided they drop the 'broken stick'", on a minor penalty for an infraction. What the domestic rule adds is reach and a label: skating with it anywhere on the ice, not merely playing with it, and the call announced as illegal equipment. Playing without a stick is fine. Get a replacement handed to you from your bench or by a teammate on the ice, or pick an unbroken one off the ice — but nobody may throw one to you, which is a penalty in itself under the same IIHF rule.

Fighting

In NIHL (all leagues), SNL and BUIHA Varsity, fighting is a five-minute major. In NIHL, NIHL1 and NIHL2, a fighting major in the last five minutes of regulation or in overtime also carries an automatic game misconduct.

New for 2026-27, the unwilling combatant is dealt with in terms. Section 6 now adds that such a player "may be awarded (at the referee's discretion) a minor OR a major penalty (2 OR a standalone 5 without a game misconduct)". So being dragged into a fight you did not want can still cost you five minutes, and which of the two you get is the referee's call — so on the domestic wording that standalone five does not, by itself, carry a game misconduct in those three competitions. In women's hockey plan on it ending yours anyway. In-House Rule 101 says a major "will, in all cases" also draw a game misconduct and an ejection, at every age including adult (§Age categories are British, and unisex), and Section 6 never says whether its "NIHL (all leagues)" scope reaches a women's fixture.

Two limits sit on the In-House fighting amendment, and both matter more than the five minutes does.

It reaches those three competitions and no others. In-House Section 6 scopes itself to "NIHL (all leagues), SNL, and BUIHA Varsity", and the In-House introduction says "Unless otherwise stated, all rules will be enforced in line with the IIHF Rule Book." In any other fixture under the In-House Rules the IIHF book stands unamended, and there ⚠️ 46.1 is a Reference Table 6 entry, so a fighting major carries an automatic game misconduct, and 46.1 itself reaches the plain willing combatant directly — ejection is the referee's discretion in the 2025/26 book and the standard penalty in the 2026/27 one. In junior hockey any major adds a game misconduct regardless.

And In-House Section 6 reaches the plain willing fight and nothing else. Section 6 names no rule number, so the rest of Rule 46 is untouched: instigator (46.3) and aggressor (46.4) each add a major and an automatic game misconduct on top of a minor; sucker-punching (46.5) and fighting outside the periods (46.9) are a major plus an automatic game misconduct; fighting off the playing surface (46.11) adds a game misconduct on top of any major; third man in (46.7) is a game misconduct at the referee's discretion, except where one is already being imposed in the original altercation; and 46.1 lets the referee impose "at least" a major plus an automatic game misconduct on a player who persists after being ordered to stop, or who resists a linesperson. Rule 28 supplementary discipline sits above all of it.

The Elite League writes its own Rule 46, and it runs in two directions at once. The EIHL Casebook's fighting section is one of the longest in the book, and nothing else in this section describes an Elite League game. On the night it is lighter than the IIHF book it otherwise adopts: the Casebook's 46.1 says "Willing combatants will be penalised with at least a Major Penalty ("Fighting")" and adds "Note for their 2nd Major Penalty an Automatic Game misconduct will be assessed" — where the 2026/27 book's 46.1, the edition the Elite League adopts, makes a major plus an automatic game misconduct "the standard penalty for a Player engaged in a fight." So in the Elite League a plain willing fight need not end your game. ⚠️ Do not hear that as permission, because three things sit on top of it. "At least" is a floor and not a ceiling. The same Casebook imposes a game misconduct on any player assessed a fighting major "after the original altercation has started" — waivable "at the discretion of the Referee" only where the opponent was clearly the instigator — so the second fight on one whistle ends your game on your first major. And IIHF Rule 20.4 is untouched, so two majors of any kind still end it. ⚠️ The Casebook also never says whether that "2nd Major Penalty" is counted in the game or across the season, and its own suspension table counts fighting majors across the whole EIHL regular season — so read it the stricter way and ask the League. What is plainly softened is the plain, first, original willing fight, and nothing around it. Afterwards it is heavier than anything else domestic. An instigator is "assessed an instigating minor penalty, a major for fighting and a ten-minute misconduct. (2 minor + 5 major + 10 misconduct)", and in the final five minutes of regulation or at any time in overtime that becomes "(2 minor + 5 major + 20 Game misconduct)" plus a suspension of "one additional game, pending a review of the incident" — with the coach "subject to supplementary discipline" as well. A player deemed both instigator and aggressor draws "an instigating (2) minor penalty, a (5) major penalty for fighting, a (10) ten-minute misconduct (instigator) and a (20) game misconduct penalty (aggressor)". A fighting major "for the 10th time during the EIHL regular season" brings an automatic one-game suspension, and the 14th "an automatic two game suspension for each additional fighting major" — reset to zero for the play-offs. And there is a minor the IIHF book does not carry at all, for a player "involved in an altercation [who] does not have his sweater properly tied down". Every fighting penalty carrying a game misconduct, an instigator or an aggressor is reviewed by the EIHL Department of Player Safety. ⚠️ The Casebook's own Rule 46 numbering does not match the book it adopts: it heads its altercation clause 46.2 and its jersey clause 46.13, where the 2026/27 IIHF book numbers those 46.3 and 46.11, and it prints 46.2 twice, for altercation and for aggressor. Look any of this up by heading, never by number.

Leaving the bench or the penalty box during an altercation

This rule is scoped to no age and no competition, and the folklore about it is wrong in both directions. Body Contact and Battles sets the rule books side by side and prices each of them. This is the British half: which book binds you, what the domestic layer does not change, and what moved in the 2026/27 edition.

IIHF Rule 70.1 is one sentence with no exception written into it: "No Player may leave the Players' bench or penalty box at any time during an altercation or for the purpose of starting an altercation." And Rule 70 is one of the rules the renumbering left alone — all ten of its sub-rules keep the same numbers under the same headings in both editions, so unlike Rule 46 there is no number here to get wrong.

Nothing in the In-House Rules amends it, and that negative was looked for rather than assumed — but the Elite League does add to it. In-House Section 6 is the fighting amendment and it reaches fighting only — the five-minute major, the unwilling combatant, and the last-five-minutes game misconduct in NIHL, NIHL1 and NIHL2 (§Fighting). Neither edition of the In-House Rules mentions Rule 70, and neither uses the word altercation anywhere; the one provision they head for benches and penalty boxes, Rule 3, is about how the home venue must build them. So the Introduction's default governs — "Unless otherwise stated, all rules will be enforced in line with the IIHF Rule Book" — and the domestic softening of the plain willing fight does not reach this rule. Playing NIHL changes what a fight costs you. It changes nothing about leaving the bench. The Elite League is the one British exception found, and it adds rather than softens. The EIHL Casebook does not write its own Rule 70 — Rule 70 is not in its contents list — but the Fines and Suspensions list at the end of its Rule 46 legislates for the same act, under an item headed for leaving the players’ or penalty bench, which points the reader on to Rule 70: a player who leaves the players’ or penalty bench "to join an altercation" "will receive either a 20 (Game Misconduct) penalty or 2 + 20 (Game Misconduct) penalty" and is "automatically suspended for the minimum of three" games, pending a review. ⚠️ That suspension limb is keyed to joining, and IIHF Rule 70.1’s bar is wider — it reaches leaving the bench or the box at any time during an altercation, for any reason at all. So the in-game penalty can land on a player the three-game minimum does not, and neither is a thing to find out by testing. The penalty on the night is the IIHF's; the automatic three-game minimum is the League's, and it is the heaviest consequence any British document read here attaches to this rule.

"Altercation" is a far lower bar than a fight, and your own book defines it. IIHF Rule 46.2 — renumbered 46.3 in the 2026/27 book, one of the moves set out in §Which IIHF edition you are playing, and where the two differ — reads "An 'altercation' is a situation involving at least" two "Players with at least one Player" to be penalized, and the 2026/27 wording is the same but for dropping "at least" before "two". ⚠️ One penalty, not one punch. A post-whistle scrum in which somebody takes a roughing minor is an altercation, and from that moment the bench door and the box are shut.

The penalty box is where this catches ordinary players rather than fighters. The IIHF's own Situation Handbook rules on a player sitting on a hooking minor who leaves the box while two others fight, doing nothing but skating around the altercation: an additional minor penalty plus a game misconduct. ⚠️ Skating around it is not staying out of it.

And do not read "leave on expiry of your penalty" as your permission. Rule 70.6 attaches a second condition: you may not leave until your penalty expires and your team is entitled to an extra skater on the ice. Coincident penalties are the everyday case where those two moments don't line up — your time is up, but your team isn't yet entitled to the extra skater, and the stoppage you were waiting for turns out to be a fight. ⚠️ Stay in the box until an official waves you out.

The 2026/27 book writes explicit supplementary-discipline exposure into these clauses, for both the player and the coach — but the in-game penalty is unchanged. The two rules price it differently, in both editions, and Rule 70.3 carries a limb worth hearing in full: it assesses a game misconduct to "the first or second Player to leave the Players’ bench (or penalty box) during an altercation", while Rule 70.4 gives any penalised player who leaves the penalty box during a stoppage and during an altercation a minor plus a game misconduct. ⚠️ Being third out of the bench door is not a free pass — Rule 70.1 still bars you from going, and whatever you do once you are there is penalised on its own terms. What's new is that several Rule 70 clauses now say in terms that a player who leaves, and that player's coach, can also face supplementary discipline under Rule 28. That authority already existed in Rule 28 itself, so nothing here changes what leaving costs you on the night — only that the route to further discipline is now written down.

What to do is one sentence. If an altercation starts while you are on the bench or in the penalty box, you stay where you are until an official releases you — not to help a teammate, not to change, and not because your penalty has just expired.

Overtime is not universal

In-House Rule 84 provides that overtime "is only played in NIHL fixtures and in SNL fixtures where specifically provided for in competition regulations." Many games simply end level.

Where NIHL National League games do go to overtime: five minutes of 3-on-3, then a game-winning-shots competition with three shooters per team taking alternate shots, and if still level it continues one shot each as sudden victory. And unlike IIHF 84.4, which requires five different shooters, the NIHL National procedure says in terms that "the same player may be used for multiple attempts."

That repeat is not open everywhere, though — Appendix 1 writes three different versions of it. NIHL 1 and 2 run the same five-minute 3-on-3 and three-shooter shootout for league and playoff games — except the first leg of a quarter- or semi-final series — but open a second attempt to a player only "(AFTER the initial 3 shots have been taken)". The SNL plays a five-minute 3-on-3 and then "[a] best-of-three penalty shot shootout", in which "[t]he first three designated shooters may be repeated after every full round of three." So name your three, and ask which version is yours before you plan on your best shooter taking two of them.

The NIHL National Playoff Final Weekend carries two separate procedures, and they differ in kind — not in degree. Appendix 1 sets them out as distinct provisions:

• Semi-finals. "If the score in the Semi Finals is level after regulation", the game goes to 20 minutes of 5-on-5 overtime, and "if still tied, a Game Winning Shots (GWS) competition will take place" — the same three-shooter procedure as above.
• The Final. "If the score in the Final is level after regulation, the game will proceed to successive 20:00 periods of 5-on-5 sudden-death overtime until a goal is scored ('golden goal')" — and then, in terms: "No Game Winning Shots will be used."

So a semi-final can end in a shootout and the Final cannot. Do not carry either across to the other: the Final is played out until somebody scores, however many periods that takes.

BUIHA has a designated exception, and it sits in tension with Rule 84's word "only". Under Rules Applying Specifically to BUIHA Games in England and Scotland, Appendix 1 provides: "Certain fixtures will be designated as VARSITY OT games on the schedule. These games will follow the NIHL rules for Overtime and Game Winning Shots." Read literally, Rule 84 confines overtime to NIHL and SNL fixtures and so excludes BUIHA altogether. That tension is in the In-House Rules themselves rather than introduced here, and nothing published resolves it — but the Varsity OT clause is the more specific provision, written for a named case, so follow it where your fixture is marked VARSITY OT on the schedule. Where a BUIHA fixture is not so marked, Rule 84 is the general rule and there is no overtime.

Age categories are British, and unisex

Junior categories are set by birth year, not by the North American banding — and the bands move by a full year every season, so the only table you can safely use is the one printed in the current season's In-House Rules. These are the 2026-27 bands, from In-House Rule 200 – Junior Hockey Age Categories:

Check the season on any birth-year table you are handed, including this one. Every band shifted by a year between the 2025-26 and 2026-27 editions: under the 2025-26 In-House Rules Under 19 was 2007–2009, Under 16 was 2010–2011, Under 14 was 2012–2013, Under 12 was 2014–2015 and Under 10 was 2016 and younger. So a player born in 2010 was Under 16 last season and is Under 19 this one. ⚠️ A table copied from a previous season puts a child in the wrong age group — in a collision sport that is not a filing error, and the gap between a fourteen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old is the whole point of having categories. Read the bands out of the current In-House Rules and nowhere else.

The In-House Rules add a note worth quoting: "Junior age categories are unisex and are not classified as 'Mens' within the UK."

In women's hockey a major penalty ends your game at every age, adult included. In-House Rule 101 says a major "will, in all cases," also draw an ejection, and states no age scope — a separate sibling clause in the same rule adds the IIHF's own under-20 ejection rule for non-adults specifically, which would do nothing new if the main clause were already limited to juniors. The Adult definition (14th birthday onward) is not an exemption from it. ⚠️ Plan on a major ending your game at any age, and confirm with your league — no official British interpretation of how this is called on the ice has been obtained here, but the text supports the conservative reading.

Junior hockey reads the same way, U19 down to U10 — but this is this document's inference, not the rule's own words. In-House Rule 201 applies "these rules" to all junior age groups without naming the specific IIHF ejection rule the way the women's rule does. It's the natural reading of a rule scoped to all junior age groups, and the conservative one: play as though a major ends a junior's game, and confirm with your league.

U12 is a different game, and neither British rule book says so

Neither British rule book sets a playing format for U12. The In-House Rules name U12 once, in the birth-year list above, and nothing else. Like the checking age, this is a question a competition regulation answers rather than a playing rule — and it is answered by the same document: IHUK's Junior Rules of Competition, whose format table gives U12 "Full ice, non-checking, running clock" and then sends the rest somewhere else in terms — "U12: Playing format, including line changes, off-side rules, and penalty administration—is set out in Appendix D."

Appendix D is where U12 hockey actually lives, and five things in it change what you do on the ice:

• U12 has no icing. The whole provision is one line: "No icing calls at U12." Nothing is whistled and nothing comes back. That is a rule, not an instruction — giving the puck away down the ice is still giving the puck away.
• At U12 an offside does not stop play. Under the heading Offsides & Frozen Pucks, Appendix D says "Play does not stop." The official calls your team out of the zone instead — its own example is "Reds OUT!" — and "the attacking team must clear the zone before re-entering." ⚠️ Not clearing is a penalty: "Failure to retreat quickly = delay of game penalty." That heading names frozen pucks as well as offsides, so the same lines read across to one — but as the heading's implication rather than as a stated rule, because the only thing the appendix says about a frozen puck in terms is "Excessive freezing by goalies may also be penalised."
• The U12 clock runs, and a buzzer changes the lines every 60 seconds. Three periods of 18 minutes on three lines, or 20 on four, all running clock — stoppages happen only where both teams agreed to them before the game, and then after each goal and at the officials' discretion. When the buzzer goes, the puck must be left where it is — and "Deliberate movement = warning, then minor penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct."
• At U12 you play on the line you were put on. Coaches must file line sheets no later than 30 minutes before face-off, and players are identified by line — numbered jerseys, coloured armbands, helmet tape, or another method both teams and the officials agree. Moving up is allowed only for an injury or an ejection, and Appendix D prices a breach flatly: "First offence = minor penalty."
• At U12 a minor is three minutes, not two — four in a four-line game — and you serve it on your own line's shifts — "Penalties are served only on the player's line shifts", and "if a player is on a 3-line rotation, they miss their own shifts until the penalty time has expired." ⚠️ Appendix D does not say whether that time runs on the game clock or only while your line is on the ice, and the two readings are far apart: the buzzer gives each of three lines one 60-second shift in every three minutes, so a three-minute minor is one missed shift of your own line on the first reading and three on the second. Nor does it say anywhere whether your team plays a player short while you sit — what it does say is that "[p]lay does not stop; second official escorts penalised player to the box." Ask your coach or the officials before the game, because nothing published settles either question. A goal in the same shift ends it, except for a major. ⚠️ And coincidental penalties are not applied at U12, so two penalties do not wipe each other out the way they would in an adult game. A "5+Game penalty" ejects you immediately, with the five minutes not served — Appendix D does not say which majors carry the ejection, so the junior-major reading (§Age categories are British, and unisex) is still an inference, but it does tell you what happens once one is called.

U10 is a different format again, not a smaller U12. The U10 Rules of Competition requires that "[a]ll Under 10 games must be played on a reduced area ice surface" — "either cross ice or half ice" — with lines changing on the buzzer at a maximum 60-second shift, face-offs at the centre of the playing surface after a goal, a line change, a frozen puck or a puck out of play, and penalties that "are the same as with other EIH junior leagues" but are explained to the player rather than recorded, the referee pulling them for the rest of the shift where that is needed. "Bodychecking is NOT allowed in U10 matches." Nothing sets an icing or offside provision for U10 in any British document read here — the two junior Rules of Competition, both editions of the In-House Rules and England Ice Hockey's Rules & Regulations, each searched with spacing, punctuation and line breaks stripped. The only age-scoped provision on either subject in any of them is U12's. ⚠️ Read that as a silence, not as a rule — ask the coach running your game day how they are restarting play.

The U12 and U10 formats above are IHUK's own junior leagues and nothing beyond them. The Junior Rules of Competition says "Junior leagues are solely owned and operated by IHUK and operate between U10s through to U19s", so inside that structure it is the document — and at U14, U16 and U19 the same table returns you to "Full ice, checking, stop clock" and the ordinary IIHF game. It settles nothing about a Scottish domestic competition outside that structure, a tournament somebody else runs, or the EIHL. ⚠️ Read the current season's Appendix D, never one copied from a previous season, for the same reason the birth-year bands have to come from the current season's rules: these documents are revised in place.

A first major can end your game, and adults are not exempt

Junior hockey, and women's hockey at every age including adult, are covered elsewhere (§Age categories are British, and unisex). This one is about you if you are an adult in any competition, and it is the rule most likely to catch a player who learned the game watching the NHL — and unlike most of this section it is the IIHF's own text rather than a British amendment, so it binds in every competition that plays the IIHF book.

Your book is the IIHF's, and IIHF Rule 20.4 attaches an automatic game misconduct to any major penalty listed in the Reference Tables. No injury needed, and once the major is called the ejection is not the referee's to withhold.

Two majors end your night too, on a separate trigger — and so do two misconducts. Rule 20.4 also ejects a player on a second major or a second misconduct in the same game, whatever they're for, and Rule 22.1 repeats the misconduct half — "An 'Automatic Game Misconduct' shall be applied to any Player who has been assessed a second (2nd) misconduct penalty in the same game." Both halves are stricter than the book most hockey writing is about. The NHL's own Rule 20.4 counts only majors and counts them one higher — "a third major penalty in the same game" — and its Rule 22, the misconduct rule, has no counting limb at all: the whole of 22.1 to 22.5 was read, along with Rule 23 and the summary tables behind both, and nothing in the NHL book turns two misconducts in a game into an ejection. ⚠️ So a player calibrated on NHL hockey has one major and one misconduct more of margin than they actually have here. That matters because a missing neck guard is, under the In-House Rules, a 10-minute misconduct with no warning, and a second violation escalates to a game misconduct automatically — see Rules Primer for the repeat-offence rule.

Reference Table 6 carries twenty entries, three of them fighting; the other seventeen include checking from behind, cross-checking, slashing, hooking, high-sticking, slew-footing, clipping and an illegal check to the head, plus a women's-only checking entry and a catch-all for any dangerous action a referee judges endangers another player — so not knowing the exact list is no defence. Plan around all of them. The only domestic softening is the plain willing fight, in NIHL, SNL and BUIHA Varsity (§Fighting) — every other Rule 46 fighting offence (instigating, being the aggressor, sucker-punching, fighting outside the periods, fighting off the ice) keeps its IIHF major-plus-ejection.

Table 7 adds five more first-major ejection risks — boarding, charging, elbowing, interference and tripping — each bundling the major and game misconduct into a single act the referee assesses at their discretion rather than as an automatic consequence of Rule 20.4. The book's own wording leaves genuine room to read Table 7 as outside 20.4's automatic reach, but nothing settles it either way. ⚠️ In the Elite League, three of those five are settled. The EIHL Casebook writes the same sentence into boarding (Rule 41), charging (Rule 42) and elbowing: "When a major penalty is imposed under this rule for a foul resulting in an injury to the face or head of an opponent, a game misconduct shall be imposed." Where the face or head is injured, the ejection there is not the referee's to withhold. Play as though the ejection follows the major regardless — being wrong about that costs you nothing, because you simply avoided a hit you did not have to take; being wrong the other way costs you the game.

Do not read this as leniency by comparison with the NHL. A player used to NHL rules should recalibrate, and the NHL's own summary table gives the size of the gap. Its Table 5 lists thirteen non-fighting infractions that can bring an automatic game misconduct with the major, and on six of them — boarding, charging, clipping, elbowing, hooking and interference — the automatic ejection arrives only where the opponent was injured, in three cases only on an injury "to face/head". None of the IIHF equivalents require an injury at all — recklessness or endangerment alone is enough. And the IIHF book has no match-penalty tier at all, for anything: the major plus the automatic misconduct is your ceiling inside the game. ⚠️ Do not hear that as the end of it. The same Disciplinary Measures clause sits under rule after rule, word for word and in both editions — boarding at 41.5, charging at 42.5, checking from behind at 43.4, elbowing at 45.5, slew-footing at 52.3 and high-sticking at 60.7 are the ones checked here — “If deemed appropriate, Supplementary Discipline can be applied by the Proper Authorities at their discretion”, routing to Rule 28, whose 28.1 lets those authorities act “whether or not such offense has been penalized by the Referee(s)”. And the referral is mandatory even though the discipline is not: Rule 20.7 requires the Referee to report “all major penalties and the surrounding circumstances” to them immediately after the game, and 23.2 sends every game misconduct to a body that “shall have full power to impose further disciplinary measures”. In the Elite League that body has a name — the EIHL Casebook's own Rule 28 makes “The Proper Authorities” the EIHL Department of Player Safety (DOPS) and EIHL Hockey Operations (§Neck protection is mandatory, for everyone — and the In-House Rules give no warning) — and in a competition the In-House Rules reach, their Rule 28 sends it to the Discipline Policy of the home association, "EIH or SIHA", and a later section of the same rules names the IHUK Department of Player Safety or the SIHA Disciplinary Committee as the bodies that act. ⚠️ What that discipline costs is not stated anywhere on this page, and that is deliberate: Rules 23.5 and 23.6 send stick and physical infractions to “the IIHF Disciplinary Code” and say nothing else, and that Code is not held here and has not been read. The route above a major is verified; its destination is not. ⚠️ On first-major ejection, yours is the stricter book.

Officials have been told to call the foul what it is

New for 2026-27, and addressed to referees rather than to you. In-House Section 4 – Types of Penalties opens: "This season we are going to place stronger emphasis on our officials to correctly label penalties they are assessing." It reports that across the British championships officials have in many cases defaulted to catch-all labels such as Interference, and asks for something more specific: "we would like our officials to call the foul what it is." Its worked example is a trip: if a player without the puck is tripped, the penalty is to be labelled Tripping, and the section says the same goes for other fouls. It then names a second case in terms: "If one player cross checks another player in the head or neck area, we want the penalty to be called Cross Checking, not Checking to the Head." The 2025-26 edition's Section 4 carried none of this and went straight to Rule 18.

This changes the name of the call, not what is legal. Nothing in it permits an act that was a penalty before, or forbids one that was not, and it attaches no age to anything. In particular it is not a body-checking rule — see §What this document does not cover.

And do not hear a relabelled call as the lesser one, because on the cross-check it is not. Both names sit in the same place in your rule book. Cross-checking 59.3 and Illegal Check to the Head 48.3 are both entries on IIHF Reference Table 6 — "Summary of major penalties that result in an automatic game misconduct" — ⚠️ so a cross-check to the head called as cross-checking carries exactly the ejection exposure it would have carried under the other label. The interference-to-tripping switch runs the same way one tier down: Interference 56.5 and Tripping 57.4 are both on Table 7, whose game misconduct rests on the referee's judgement. §A first major can end your game sets out what both tables do.

Both table numbers are the 2025/26 book's, which is the edition the In-House Rules' Introduction names. The 2026/27 IIHF book merges Tables 5, 6 and 7 into a single Table 5, and every entry named here is still on it.

Team sheets and bench staffing

The official team list must reach the referee crew no later than 20 minutes before the scheduled face-off, and only listed players are eligible. Late submission is a bench minor for delay of game, "to be served at the start of the game or at the first stoppage if identified later" — so it is served even where the omission is only spotted after the game has begun.

For IHUK-sanctioned games, benches must carry a Level 2 or higher non-playing coach aged 18+, plus one more coach at minimum Level 1. The rule opens by scoping itself — "For all IHUK-sanctioned games (except where competition regs state otherwise)", where the 2025-26 edition said EIH-sanctioned — and there are three documented carve-outs:

• Adult recreational hockey in England: "If all players on both teams are 18 years of age or older on game day, there is no requirement for qualified EIH coaches to be present on the bench." If any under-18 plays, the standard rules return: "If any player under 18 is taking part, the standard IHUK Rules of Competition shall apply (see Rule 25)" — a separate document not reproduced here, and one the 2025-26 edition called the EIH Rules of Competition.
• BUIHA (university) hockey: "There is no requirement for coaches in BUIHA ice hockey, as players under 18 are not permitted to participate." The carve-out ends where its reason does: if a non-BUIHA opponent in a challenge match fields an under-18 player, the same section sends the fixture back to the standard In-House requirements, pointing to Rule 25.
• SIHA-sanctioned games run a different coaching-qualification ladder: Level 2 minimum for junior and senior, Level 1 minimum for recreational.

A team manager may sit on the bench but does not count toward the requirement. On medics the In-House Rules say "While not mandatory, the presence of a qualified medic on the bench is strongly recommended" — a recommendation worth taking on its own terms rather than reading as an exemption.

None of that describes an Elite League game. The In-House Rules never name the Elite League, and the EIHL Casebook writes its own Rule 5: a game-day roster of twenty players, no more than eighteen skaters and two goaltenders, a minimum of twelve skaters and two goaltenders, and a maximum of eight team officials per club on the bench — "[i]f not listed on the official score sheet, no other persons will be permitted on the players benches." It sets no coaching-qualification ladder at all, so the Level 1 and Level 2 requirements above are the In-House Rules' and not the League's, and it points outward for the rest to a document not read here: "See EIHL Roster Regulations for more details around the overall roster composition." Its Rule 7 also carries a penalty no In-House fixture does — a bench minor for naming the wrong starting line-up, raisable only "before the second face-off in the first period takes place."

What medical cover you can expect at the rink, and what to ask for

This is England-and-Wales only, and elsewhere the cover is recommended rather than required. Everything below about what a venue must have is England Ice Hockey's, which governs only England and Wales. Beyond them the one provision on the subject is a recommendation rather than a rule: IHUK's WNIHL Rules of Competition say clubs "are strongly recommended to appoint a registered and qualified medical practitioner". Nothing in either edition of the In-House Rules — the document that reaches Scotland, Northern Ireland and university hockey — or in the junior, U10 and NIHL 1 and 2 Rules of Competition, or in the Coaching Regulations, sets any first-aid, ambulance, defibrillator, emergency-plan or emergency-number requirement on the venue. One thing is mandatory everywhere, and it is a person rather than a place: the IHUK Coaching Regulations make a Basic First Aid certificate mandatory for every registered coach, UK-wide — but that tells you nothing about what the building itself has, and the accepted online courses don't confer full "qualified first aider" status. ⚠️ So outside England and Wales, ask your club what cover your rink actually has.

Five things are required, in England and Wales: a first aider — and ⚠️ the rule attaches no qualification to that person: 33.5 says only "First aider", while the NQF Level 3 bar in 33.7 belongs to the recommended professional practitioner, not the mandatory first aider; a first aid kit checked before each game; a risk assessment and an emergency action plan, both shared with the visiting team; and a telephone to summon the emergency services. A doctor or physio is only recommended — check the team sheet to see whether one is present. ⚠️ And an ambulance is explicitly not required on-standby — the rule leaves that to the club's own risk assessment. So a fixture with a first aider, a phone, and no ambulance and no doctor is exactly what the rule allows, which is why the phone is on the mandatory list.

The numbers. No British rulebook names one; England Ice Hockey has adopted the UK Concussion Guidelines for Non-Elite (Grassroots) Sport, which tell you to call 999 for red flags or any other significant injury, and to call 111, the NHS line, for assessment within 24 hours otherwise. The guidance's own instruction is that if any of them is "reported or observed", the player should receive "urgent medical assessment from an appropriate Healthcare Professional onsite or in a hospital Accident and Emergency (A&E) Department using emergency ambulance transfer if necessary". At a rink whose mandatory cover is a first aider and a telephone, that means calling 999, not calling 111.

Know what counts as a red flag before you need it, ⚠️ and learn the whole list rather than a handful of it — a partial list teaches you to stop looking.

These are the fourteen British red flags, in full. They belong to a player who has taken a blow to the head, or a blow to the body that moved the head, and any one of them reported or observed means calling 999:

• Any loss of consciousness because of the injury
• Deteriorating consciousness — more drowsy
• Amnesia (no memory) for events before or after the injury
• Increasing confusion or irritability
• Unusual behaviour change
• Any new neurological deficit — the guidance's five examples are "[d]ifficulties with understanding, speaking, reading or writing", decreased sensation, loss of balance, weakness, and double vision
• Seizure or convulsion, limb twitching, or lying rigid or motionless due to muscle spasm
• Severe or increasing headache
• Repeated vomiting
• Severe neck pain
• Any suspicion of a skull fracture — its examples are a cut, a bruise, swelling, or severe pain at the site of injury
• Previous history of brain surgery or bleeding disorder
• Current "blood-thinning" therapy
• Current drug or alcohol intoxication

Any one of those fourteen is enough on its own — call 999.

Three of the fourteen are facts about the player rather than about the injury — a previous brain surgery or bleeding disorder, current blood-thinning therapy, and current drug or alcohol intoxication. Two of those you would have to ask about or know already; intoxication is often the most visible thing at a rink. What makes the three matter is that they fire when nothing else has: a teammate on blood-thinning therapy who takes a knock to the head is one of the fourteen on that alone, so call 999 even if they get up and tell you they are fine. Find out in advance who on your team is on one.

Conditioning and Recovery carries CRT6's ten, which is the international list, and the two are not the same list. Where they differ, act on whichever fires first. Neither CRT6 nor the British guidance writes that rule — it is what reading the two lists side by side leaves you with, and it can only ever make you act earlier, never later. They do not all run the same way. CRT6 is lower on the neck: it reads "Neck pain or tenderness" where the British list needs "Severe neck pain", so call 999 for any neck pain rather than waiting for it to become severe. The British list is lower on the skull: "[a]ny suspicion of a skull fracture" against CRT6's "Visible deformity of the skull" — do not wait for a deformity. And the British list is lower on a seizure: CRT6 stops at "Seizure, 'fits', or convulsion", while the British flag also reaches limb twitching and a player lying rigid or motionless from muscle spasm — a presentation the same guidance's visible-clues list calls "[t]onic posturing" and warns "may appear to be unconscious". A player who goes stiff and still after a head impact is an emergency on your list, and somebody who has learned only the word "convulsion" will not recognise it as one.

If a player is lying motionless, establish whether they respond, ⚠️ and if you cannot get a response, call 999. That one check is the whole of the decision, and it decides it in both directions.

A player who is unconscious is a red flag on both lists, and a player who has gone rigid is the British seizure flag. You are not being asked to tell those two apart, because both of them are on the list. Lying motionless is not by itself a red flag on either list — on both it sits among the visible clues instead — and the case that describes is the player who is lying still but awake and answering you: off the ice and medically assessed, rather than an ambulance. So the response check runs both ways — it is what tells you an ambulance is not the answer, as well as what tells you it is. Treating a player you cannot rouse as the loss-of-consciousness red flag is this guide's reading of the two lists rather than either document's words: each of them carries "[l]oss of consciousness or responsiveness" and lying motionless as separate visible clues, and neither attaches a responsiveness condition to lying motionless. It can only ever make you call sooner, never later.

And the same adopted concussion guidance — the UK Concussion Guidelines for Non-Elite (Grassroots) Sport, November 2024 edition — sets a floor under when you play again. It states that "[a]ll concussions should be managed individually, but there should be no return to competition before 21 days from injury", and its graduated return programme carries the same bar at the final stage: return to sports competition, "(NOT before day 21)". Count the day of the injury as day 0 — the guidance says so in terms — so day 21 falls twenty-one days after the day you were hurt. ⚠️ That is a bar, not a date and not a clearance. It does not say you are ready on day 21, and it does not replace the medical assessment, which still has to happen first — it means a clearance arriving sooner does not put you in a non-elite British game sooner. Nor does it put you in a contact practice sooner: the same guidance holds back any training with a risk of head injury until you have been free of symptoms at rest for 14 days, and says that stage "cannot start until Day 15 at the earliest". The guidance carves out one group and grassroots hockey is not it: athletes in the "Enhanced Care pathways" of elite and professional sport, managed by healthcare professionals experienced in sports concussion, "may be formally cleared for an earlier return to competition." Conditioning and Recovery has the red flags, the ordinary signs and what has to happen in the first hours.

Two more instructions, from two different sources, and neither is contradicted anywhere found. The UK guidance: "If a neck injury is suspected, the player should only be moved by Healthcare Professionals with appropriate training." And separately, from CRT6 — the international concussion recognition tool, not any British document — "Do not remove helmet (if present) or other equipment." The UK guidance never mentions helmets at all, so its silence is not a contradiction of CRT6's instruction; a British document not repeating something is not a British document rejecting it. Leave the helmet on, and don't move a player with a suspected neck injury yourself except as far as keeping their airway clear needs — the British text leaves moving them to trained professionals, and the one exception CRT6 gives an untrained helper is the airway. Body Contact and Battles owns the full on-ice response.

What to do with all of that is short, and it is done before you need it. Find out who the first aider is, where the telephone is, and whether your team has been given the rink's emergency action plan — and ask the same of an away rink, since sharing both with visitors is part of the rule.

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What this document does not cover

• EIHL interpretation, rule by rule. The Elite League publishes its own Casebook, and it was obtained for this document on 22 September 2026 — Motorpoint EIHL Casebook 26-27, Version 1.1 of 8 September 2026, from the League's own Casebook page. It was read end to end in the primary text on 22 September 2026 — its Preamble, its contents list and every rule section it carries, Rule 5 Teams through to Section 11 Women's Ice Hockey. It carries twenty-two rule numbers and a Section 11; twelve of those rule numbers are reported here, and Section 11, and these are they: Rule 5.6 Pre-Game Warm-Up On The Ice, Rule 9.5 Protective Equipment, Rule 9.12 Neck Laceration Protection and Rule 86.6 Pre-Game Warm-Up, quoted in §Neck protection is mandatory, for everyone — and the In-House Rules give no warning, with 9.5's escalation set out at §Equipment that does not meet the rules has its own ladder and Rule 28's definition of "The Proper Authorities" quoted alongside 86.6; Rules 37 and 38 in §The In-House Rules bar on-ice video review — the Elite League keeps it; Rule 64 in §Embellishment costs you twelve minutes under the In-House Rules, not two; Rules 41, 42 and its elbowing counterpart in §A first major can end your game, and adults are not exempt; Rule 46 in §Fighting, and its leaving-the-bench suspension in §Leaving the bench or the penalty box during an altercation, Rules 5.1, 5.4 and 7 in §Team sheets and bench staffing, and Rule 69 in §The Elite League publishes its own goaltender-interference criteria; and Section 11, which reads in its entirety "Not applicable to EIHL Competition". ⚠️ And note which stamp the body read carries: every page footer of the served file reads Version 1.0, dated 1 August 2026 — so the pages read end to end are footered Version 1.0 whatever the download is labelled. So the Casebook has been searched for anything bearing on this document, but it has not been summarised, and nothing here should be taken as describing what the EIHL does with a rule it does not name.
• Competition regulations, except on body checking and the junior playing formats. Each league sets its own regulations on rosters, imports, fixtures and discipline, separately from the playing rules, and they are not reproduced here. The In-House Rules note that IHUK "may also issue Rule Bulletins from time to time" — the 2025-26 edition attributed that to EIH and SIHA — and cross-refer, at Rule 25, to a standing IHUK Rules of Competition setting the coaching requirements. The 2025-26 edition called that same document the EIH Rules of Competition, so both names are in circulation. Three things this document does take from them, because the playing rules carry none of them: the checking format, the U12 and U10 playing formats, and the junior and women's bench equipment requirements. Four of IHUK's 2026-27 Rules of Competition — junior, U10, NIHL 1 and 2, and WNIHL — are quoted in the Overview above for the checking format; the Junior and U10 documents again for the junior formats (§U12 is a different game, and neither British rule book says so); and the Junior and WNIHL documents for their equipment sections (§Neck protection is mandatory, for everyone — and the In-House Rules give no warning). All four were also searched, and found silent, on jewellery and on any extension of the neck-guard requirement to training. Nothing else in any of them is reproduced here. ⚠️ No Rule Bulletin has been obtained for this document. So every British rule here is the position of the published books — the In-House Rules as at Revision 1 of 25 July 2026, and the Rules of Competition as fetched on 10 September 2026 — and a bulletin issued since could have changed any of it without changing those documents. Ask your league whether one has been issued.
• Northern Ireland — partly covered, and only on the playing rules. The 2026-27 In-House Rules apply "in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (the Home Countries)", where the 2025-26 edition reached only England and Scotland. So the playing-rule amendments in this document now cover Northern Irish hockey. ⚠️ But several individual amendments still scope themselves more narrowly than the document does — the video-review and Coach's Challenge bars are written as applying "in EIH or SIHA competition", eleven times between them, and that wording was carried into the 2026-27 edition unchanged. What governs registration, discipline and competition regulations in Northern Ireland is not established here: England Ice Hockey's Rules & Regulations describe EIH as the governing body for England and Wales (Rules 1.1, 3.1, 17.1), and no Northern Irish equivalent has been read for this document.
• What medical cover is required at a rink outside England and Wales. No Ice Hockey UK document requires any — the WNIHL Rules of Competition only recommend that a club appoint a medical practitioner — see §What medical cover you can expect at the rink, and ask your club and league.
• Whether body checking is legal at your age — outside the four Rules of Competition read for this document. Neither British rule book sets a checking age, and it is worth being explicit about why, because the negative is the reason the answer has to be looked for somewhere else. The Rules & Regulations contain no body-checking provision at all. The In-House Rules set no age rule for it either: the 2025-26 edition used the language of body contact nowhere, and the 2026-27 edition uses it in exactly one place — a Section 4 instruction to officials about which penalty to call, asking that a cross-check to an opponent's head or neck be called "Cross Checking, not Checking to the Head." §Officials have been told to call the foul what it is quotes that section in full. ⚠️ That is about the name of the penalty, not about what is legal. A cross-check to the head is a penalty under either label; nothing in it permits contact, restricts it, or attaches an age to it. The IIHF book restricts checking only in women's hockey, at Rule 101.1, and the North American age lines are not in force here. What answers it is a competition regulation rather than a playing rule, and four of them were read for this document — the junior, U10, NIHL 1 and 2 and WNIHL Rules of Competition, all quoted in the Overview above and in Body Contact and Battles §If you play in Britain. ⚠️ What is still not covered is everything outside those four documents: the EIHL, BUIHA university hockey, NIHL National, the PNIHL — which the NIHL 1 and 2 document names, and points at its own separate national rules — the SNL, and other Scottish domestic competitions outside the IHUK junior structure. No regulation for any of those was read for this document, so nothing here settles whether they are checking or non-checking either way. ⚠️ And do not settle it by asking whether IHUK runs your league, because that question has the wrong shape: the In-House Rules legislate by name for NIHL National (§Overtime is not universal), for the SNL and for BUIHA Varsity (§Fighting), so IHUK's writ plainly runs in competitions none of these four Rules of Competition covers. Ask your league before you hit anyone.

Common Mistakes

• Reading the USA Hockey flags as though they were yours. Take the IIHF flag and skip the other two — in Britain those are the ones that apply to you. The USA Hockey ones are simply the commonest flags here, because the base text is written to NHL rules.
• Assuming neck protection is optional because you are an adult. Wear one every time you go on the ice, practice included. Adults being exempt is the North American position, and it is not the British one: IIHF Rule 9.12 mandates it at every British level, adults included. Under the In-House Rules — the NIHL, the SNL, women's hockey, the recreational and junior game and university hockey — it is a 10-minute misconduct with no warning, and in England and Wales England Ice Hockey extends the requirement to practice too, not just games. In the Elite League the tier is the IIHF's — a warning, then a minor, and its Casebook's equipment ladder takes a player who refuses the change to a misconduct if they return to the ice without making it, and a game misconduct the third time — and the Casebook extends the requirement to warm-ups and practice sessions.
• Expecting a review, or a Coach's Challenge. Play the whistle and get on with it — the referee's call on the ice is the call. There is no on-ice video review in EIH or SIHA competition, and no challenge either — the bar is EIH and SIHA competition, not British hockey, and the Elite League keeps both. Video can still be used for supplementary discipline after the game.
• Reading a junior birth-year table from last season. Get the bands from the current season's Rule 200 and nowhere else. ⚠️ Every band moved a full year between the 2025-26 and 2026-27 In-House Rules, so a player born in 2010 was Under 16 and is now Under 19 — an out-of-date table puts a child in the wrong age group in a contact sport.
• Playing U12 in Britain and waiting for an icing whistle, or for a linesperson to blow an offside. Play on, and when the official calls your team out of the zone, get everyone back over the line at once before you go in again — because neither whistle comes. IHUK's Junior Rules of Competition Appendix D puts U12 on a running clock and states the whole of its icing rule in one line — "No icing calls at U12." On an offside "play does not stop" — the official calls your team out of the zone instead, and ⚠️ failing to clear it quickly is a delay-of-game penalty. Nothing older works that way: U14 and up is the ordinary full-ice, stop-clock IIHF game.
• Assuming a minor at U12 works the way an adult minor does. Ask your coach or the officials before the game how they are counting it, because guessing in the box is how a player goes back out early. It is three minutes — four in a four-line game — and you serve it on your own line's shifts, and Appendix D never says whether that time runs on the game clock or only while your line is out, nor whether your team plays a player short while you sit. Coincidental penalties are not applied at U12 either, so two penalties do not wipe each other out. And jumping onto a line that is not the one you were put on is itself a minor.
• Assuming your centre only loses the draw the way the NHL does. Keep your wingers out of the circle until the puck drops, and have somebody ready to take the dot. In-House Rule 76 replaces the centre for all violations except on a draw following an icing — so a winger's violation costs you your centre, not the winger — and it lets either centre put the stick down first, which the IIHF book does not. Both are new for 2026-27, and ⚠️ neither reaches the Elite League, where the IIHF book runs unamended and the defending centre's stick goes down first at the eight spots outside centre ice — but the winger still costs you your centre there, because the IIHF's own 2026/27 Rule 76.3 replaces the centre for a teammate's encroachment on most draws as well.
• Thinking a dive costs two minutes. Stay on your feet: under the In-House Rules selling a fall costs twelve minutes, not two — yours in the box, or a designated teammate's if you are the goaltender, because a goalkeeper is never sent to the box. In-House Rule 64 makes it "2 plus 10": a minor plus a 10-minute misconduct, where the IIHF book gives a minor alone and the Elite League's own Casebook keeps that plain minor. Your team is short only two, but a second misconduct in the game ends it — a goaltender's too, with a teammate or the backup taking the net.
• Looking for a checking age in the rule book, not finding one, and inferring the North American answer. Ask your league before you hit anyone. Neither British book sets one — the 2026-27 In-House Rules' only body-contact sentence is an instruction about how officials label a penalty, not about who may check. The document that does set it is your competition's Rules of Competition, and in the four read for this document the junior line falls between U12 and U14 — a year after USA Hockey's 12U and a year before Hockey Canada's U13, so neither guess would have landed — and a junior who plays up, one age group or into the NIHL from 16 (15 with approval), is under the older game's line. ⚠️ Nor does "IHUK runs my league" answer it: IHUK's In-House Rules reach NIHL National, the SNL and BUIHA Varsity, and no Rules of Competition for any of those was read here.
• Hearing "cross-checking" instead of "checking to the head" and thinking you got the lesser call. You did not — and with your own stick, don't cross-check at all: it is at least a minor; into the back of an opponent who doesn't see it coming, there is no minor, because that is how the IIHF defines checking from behind — a major and an automatic game misconduct; and to the head or neck a major for it ejects you whichever name the referee announces. Officials are now told to name fouls more precisely, but cross-checking and checking-to-the-head sit on the same automatic-ejection table — Table 6 of the 2025/26 IIHF book, and a table number only resolves in the edition it came from. ⚠️ Interference and tripping sit on the discretionary table instead, where the game misconduct is the referee's judgement rather than automatic — a different tier, and §A first major can end your game says so. The name changed; the tier didn't. See §Officials have been told to call the foul what it is.
• Playing on after your helmet comes off. Leave the ice, straight away, without waiting for a whistle. In-House Rule 9.8 requires it, and failing to is a misconduct — the same tier the same rules give a missing neck guard, and two misconducts in one game end it. The same rule set treats a helmet and facemask that do not match manufacturer sizing as Dangerous Equipment, and removes you until it is corrected.
• Taking the neck guard off once you are on the bench. Keep it on for as long as you are on the bench. In junior and WNIHL hockey it is required there as well as on the ice, and it reaches you even when you are not playing: IHUK’s Rules of Competition put dressed players on the bench in full kit including the neck guard, and a non-playing junior may be on the bench only in a helmet with full-face protection, a neck guard and upper-body protection — "[o]therwise, they must leave the bench."
• Bending down for a neck guard that has come off in play. The rule is the same shape as the detached-helmet one above, and it is written just as flatly. In-House Rule 9.12: "If a neck guard comes off during play, the player must leave the ice and cannot retrieve it." Go to the bench and let somebody else collect it. The rule states no separate penalty for picking it up, but playing on without one is a 10-minute misconduct with no warning, and a second violation by the same player is another that "automatically escalates to a Game Misconduct."
• Wearing the chin strap loose. Tighten it until no more than one finger fits between the strap and your chin, and do it before the warm-up rather than at the first whistle. Under the In-House Rules that gap must not exceed 2.5 cm — the first offence on your team sends the player to the bench as a team warning, and after that a loose strap is a 10-minute misconduct, so a teammate's warning can use up yours. The figure is British; the IIHF book beneath it only asks that the strap be fastened. A loose strap is also a strap a helmet can come off over, which puts you under In-House Rule 9.8, the detached-helmet rule: off the ice, immediately. ⚠️ If you ever play under USA Hockey, the same loose strap is riskier there, because under USA Hockey 615(c) a game misconduct goes to a player "who doesn't wear their helmet/facemask as designed and the helmet/facemask is removed during an altercation" — the loose strap is the condition that makes it bite — where the IIHF's book does not penalise either player for a helmet that simply comes off.
• Playing English university hockey and reading past the half-visor minimum. Wear at minimum a half visor in a BUIHA game — a cage or a full-face visor clears the floor too. BUIHA has its own clause, separate from the SIHA one, and it binds every player in a BUIHA game — but only as a minimum, so an under-18 player fielded against BUIHA by a non-BUIHA opponent in a challenge match still stays under the IIHF's Under-18 full-face rule.
• Thinking a major in junior or women's hockey costs you five minutes. Plan on your night being over, and confirm it with your league. In women's hockey a major ends your game outright at every age, adult included, and junior hockey reads the same way U19 down to U10. And don't read that as adults elsewhere being safe: the IIHF book ejects any adult on a first major for seventeen non-fighting offences on its automatic-ejection table, with no injury required, plus five more on the discretionary table at the referee's judgement. See §A first major can end your game for the full list and what's domestically softened.
• Leaving the penalty box because your time was up and the whistle went. Stay in the box until an official releases you. If the whistle went for an altercation, the box is shut regardless — see §Leaving the bench or the penalty box during an altercation.
• Assuming your rink is 60 × 30. Measure rather than assume. The In-House Rules authorise sheets below 56 m × 26 m for all levels and in all fixtures they reach; they never mention the Elite League, so nothing there rests on them. (No published census of British rink dimensions exists, so no distribution is claimed here — only that the authorisation is broad.)
• Assuming the NIHL National Playoff Final can go to a shootout. Plan your bench and your legs for as many extra periods as it takes, not for three shooters. The semi-finals can go to a shootout; the Final cannot. It plays successive 20-minute sudden-death periods to a golden goal, and Appendix 1 says in terms that no Game Winning Shots will be used.
• Buying a junior a full visor because it is legal somewhere. Buy a cage — it satisfies every rule on a British junior skater, 18 or over included. A full visor meets the IIHF's Under-18 rule but not England Ice Hockey's, which makes face cages mandatory in junior hockey in England and Wales — and IHUK's junior rules list England Ice Hockey's Skaters' Equipment rules, where that cage rule sits, as additions to their own, even though their own list says "cage or full visor".
• Assuming an ambulance, or a doctor, is at the rink. Find out before the game who the first aider is and where the phone is, and be ready to call 999 yourself. Neither an ambulance nor a doctor is required, even in England and Wales — a first aider, a kit, a plan and a phone are the mandatory minimum, and outside England and Wales even that isn't written down. See §What medical cover you can expect at the rink.
• Learning four or five red flags and thinking you know the list. Learn all of them. The guidance England Ice Hockey has adopted runs to fourteen, and a partial list teaches you to stop looking. Three of the fourteen are facts about the player rather than things you can see — a previous brain surgery or bleeding disorder, current blood-thinning therapy, and current drug or alcohol intoxication — so a teammate on anticoagulants who takes a knock to the head is an ambulance call while looking completely fine. See §What medical cover you can expect at the rink.
• Thinking a doctor's clearance is the last thing between you and your next game. Plan on at least 21 days out of competition after a concussion, however you feel. The concussion guidance England Ice Hockey has adopted sets a floor for the non-elite game: no return to competition before 21 days from injury. That is a bar underneath the medical decision, not a replacement for it — the assessment still has to happen, and the bar does not move because you feel fine. Training with a risk of head injury, a contact practice included, waits until you have been free of symptoms at rest for 14 days, and not before day 15. Elite and professional athletes on an Enhanced Care pathway are the one group the 21-day floor can be lifted for. See §What medical cover you can expect at the rink.
• Assuming a major is the only way to end your own game. Once you have taken one misconduct, play the rest of the game as though the next one ends it — because two misconducts do it too, on their own separate count: IIHF Rule 20.4 triggers an automatic game misconduct on a second major or a second misconduct, and Rule 22.1 restates the misconduct half on its own — so no major is required at all. The NHL's equivalent trigger is a third major, with no misconduct-count limb — so a player calibrated on NHL rules won't be watching for this one.
• Removing an injured player's own helmet. That's the opposite of the instruction. CRT6, the international concussion recognition tool, is explicit: "Do not remove helmet (if present) or other equipment." No British document contradicts it, and a British document simply not mentioning helmets is not the same as rejecting the instruction. Leave the helmet on, and don't move a player with a suspected neck injury yourself except to keep their airway clear.
• Arguing with a referee who has told you to change a piece of equipment. Go and fix the item, and take it up afterwards if you still want to. The ladder under IIHF Rule 9.5 is nobody's amendment and it applies wherever you play in Britain, the Elite League included: a warning, then a minor for Delay of Game if you refuse, a misconduct if you come back out unchanged, and a game misconduct the third time. And two misconducts in one game end it. See §Equipment that does not meet the rules has its own ladder.
• Treating the In-House Rules as the rule book. Read them with the IIHF book open beside them. They are a diff. Without the IIHF book beside them they do not describe the game.
• Assuming "EIHA" is defunct because the website says England Ice Hockey. Same organisation, renamed.

Check yourself

Answer each question before you go on — a real attempt, not a guess. Then go and check, because the checking is the part that does the work. Producing an answer and getting it wrong is worth more than recognising a right one, but only when the right answer follows: the section named with each question, and the Key Takeaways after them, are where you get it. Where the answer lives in another document, that is named too.

1. Somebody hands you a hockey document written to NHL rules with divergences flagged for the IIHF, USA Hockey and Hockey Canada. Which of those flags are yours, and what sits on top of that base depending on which competition you play in? (§Overview)

2. You are an adult, and you have read that adults are exempt from neck protection. Whose rule is that, what happens to you in a game under the In-House Rules without one, and does the requirement stop at games? (§Neck protection is mandatory, for everyone — and the In-House Rules give no warning)

3. A goal goes in off a skate and your bench wants it looked at. What can the officials do about that in EIH or SIHA competition — and what can still be reviewed once the game is over? (§The In-House Rules bar on-ice video review — the Elite League keeps it)

4. What is the single question about contact this document says it cannot answer for you? Say why neither British source answers it, and where the answer actually lives. (§What this document does not cover)

5. Your goaltender asks whether the restricted area binds them. What do the two British documents say, which parts of Britain does the suspension not reach, and what should the goaltender — and the attacking team — do in the meantime? (§The trapezoid may not be enforced)

6. IIHF Rule 1.2 fixes one rink dimension and gives a range for the other. What does the domestic authorisation permit on top of that, and why is it not a relaxation of Rule 1.2 but a departure from it? (§Rinks are often smaller than the book says)

7. You are playing U14 and take a major for cross-checking. What should you plan for, and why is the junior extension an inference rather than the rule's own words? And if you are an adult playing women's hockey, does In-House Rule 101's ejection provision reach you — what in the rule's structure decides that? (§Age categories are British, and unisex)

8. A parent shows you a birth-year table and asks which group their child is in. What is the first thing you check about the table itself, and why does getting it wrong matter more here than in most sports? (§Age categories are British, and unisex)

9. You line up for a defensive-zone draw and your winger drifts into the circle before the drop. What happens, and what is the one kind of draw where it happens differently? Then: whose stick goes down first across the Home Countries, why is that not the IIHF's answer — and why is it not the Elite League's either? (§Under the In-House Rules your centre is replaced for almost any faceoff violation)

10. Your league game is level at the final buzzer. What normally happens, and in which competitions is that different? Name the two Playoff Final Weekend procedures, say which of them cannot end in a shootout, and say how the British shootout differs from the IIHF's. (§Overtime is not universal)

11. You are an adult playing in Britain and you take a major penalty for cross-checking. Are you still in the game? What if it were a major for boarding instead? (§A first major can end your game, and adults are not exempt)

12. You take a cross-check to the head and hear the referee announce it as cross-checking rather than checking to the head. Has your opponent been given the lesser call, and what decides that? (§Officials have been told to call the foul what it is)

13. A teammate goes down and is not getting up. In England or Wales, what is your club required to have at the rink, what is only recommended, and what does the rule say about an ambulance? Which number does the guidance England Ice Hockey has adopted give for each of its two situations, how many red flags that guidance lists in all, what its own neck-pain flag requires and why you should not wait for that, and where does the "leave the helmet on" half of the downed-player instruction come from, given that the guidance never mentions a helmet? (§What medical cover you can expect at the rink, and what to ask for)

14. A fight breaks out at the far end while you are sitting in the penalty box, and your two minutes have just expired. May you leave? Say which rule answers it, why an NIHL fixture's five-minute fighting major makes no difference to the answer, and what the IIHF's own Situation Handbook says about a player who leaves the box and simply skates around the altercation. (§Leaving the bench or the penalty box during an altercation)

15. Your child plays U12 in Britain. Which document sets the format of their games — and name three things in it that differ from the game on television. Then say what changes at U14, and what U10 games are played on. (§U12 is a different game, and neither British rule book says so)

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Key Takeaways

1. Play to the IIHF book, and find out which domestic layer sits on top of it in your competition. At every level in Britain, recreational through the GB national side, your rule book is the IIHF's — the Elite League too, whose own Casebook makes the IIHF book the ruling for every rule it does not itself cover. Wherever a document flags an IIHF difference, that is your game; USA Hockey or Hockey Canada flags are not. On top sit the In-House Rules in the NIHL, the SNL, women's hockey, the recreational and junior game and university hockey — amendments, not a rule book, which win where they differ — and the EIHL Casebook in the Elite League. Take the referee's call as the call in EIH or SIHA competition: there is no on-ice video review and no Coach's Challenge there, though the Elite League keeps both.

2. Keep your wingers out of the faceoff circle until the puck drops, and have a second player ready to take the draw. Under the In-House Rules, new for 2026-27, the linesperson replaces your centre for any violation except on the draw after an icing — a winger's violation included — and either centre may put the stick down first. ⚠️ Neither of those two faceoff changes reaches the Elite League, which those rules never name and whose own Casebook writes no Rule 76 at all, so an EIHL draw runs the IIHF book unamended and the defending centre's stick goes down first — but a winger in the circle still costs you your centre there too, under the IIHF's own 2026/27 Rule 76.3.

3. Wear a neck laceration protector, whatever your age and whatever level you play. It is mandatory at every British level — IIHF Rule 9.12 itself, not a domestic add-on — and no age or competition is exempt. The In-House Rules strip out the warning: no warning, straight to a 10-minute misconduct. If it comes off during play, leave the ice — you may not retrieve it. In junior and WNIHL hockey it is required on the bench too, and on nights you are not playing: a junior not dressed to play may be on the bench only in a helmet with full-face protection, a neck guard and upper-body protection, and "[o]therwise, they must leave the bench." And in two places the requirement runs wider than game day: England Ice Hockey's own Rules & Regulations 24.3 extend it to "all on ice activities" — practices and stick-and-puck included — and the Elite League's own Casebook rule applies "during warm-ups and practice sessions" as well, though the Elite League keeps the IIHF's warning-then-minor tier rather than the domestic misconduct — and its equipment ladder takes a player who refuses the change to a misconduct for returning to the ice without making it, and a game misconduct the third time.

4. Ask your league before you hit anyone. Body checking is answered by a different kind of document, and that is true of a lot else here: your competition's own regulations are the last word, and neither the IIHF book nor the In-House Rules sets a British checking age. Your competition's Rules of Competition does, and the four 2026-27 editions read for this document — junior, U10, NIHL Division 1 and 2 and the WNIHL — make junior U10 and U12 non-checking and U14 upward checking, NIHL Division 1 and 2 checking, and WNIHL non-checking at U16 and senior — so the British junior line sits between U12 and U14, matching neither North American line. A junior who plays up — one age group, or into the NIHL from 16 (15 with approval) — plays under the older game's line. Those four documents are the whole of it. For the EIHL, BUIHA, NIHL National, the PNIHL, the SNL or other Scottish domestic hockey outside that junior structure, nothing was read and nothing here settles it — and "IHUK runs my league" does not settle it either, because IHUK's In-House Rules reach several competitions these four documents do not. See Body Contact and Battles §If you play in Britain. Where your league's regulations disagree with anything here, your league's regulations are right. Check them.

5. Measure your rink before you plan around the book's dimensions — it may well be smaller. Sheets below 56 m × 26 m are authorised for all levels and, from 2026-27, in all fixtures, with two rinks named as U16-only exceptions. That is short of the IIHF's fixed 60 m length and its 26 m minimum width.

6. Stay off the goaltender, inside the crease and outside it. A goalkeeper outside the crease is not fair game: under IIHF Rule 69 deliberate or unnecessary contact with one draws a minor or a major wherever they are and whether or not a goal goes in, and contact that impairs them can wipe out the goal you just scored. If the goaltender is trying to set, give ground. In EIH and SIHA competition there is no video review to rescue a net-front call, and in the Elite League the League's own criteria make contact in the blue paint enough to disallow a goal.

7. Goaltenders: play as though the trapezoid binds, whatever is painted on your ice. England Ice Hockey's suspension of it reaches England and Wales at most and may no longer stand, and nothing the Elite League publishes takes it out. It never touched the separate delay-of-game minor for freezing or playing the puck to cause a deliberate stoppage outside your crease, either. Attackers, plan the other way — assume their goaltender may come out for a dump-in. Ask your league which applies.

8. Ask which IIHF edition your officials carry, and where the two differ, play to the stricter one — above all with your stick. Stick contact above an opponent's shoulders is a minor in both editions, one that injures the neck, face or head is a double minor, and a reckless one can be a major with an automatic game misconduct. Under the 2026/27 book that double minor reaches a stick that was never carried high, and the height that counts is measured on the player you hit — so lift a stick low on the shaft, well below the bottom hand, and never at a player bent over the puck.

9. Skaters: drop a broken stick the moment it breaks. Playing on with it is a minor in the IIHF book, and under the In-House Rules even skating with it anywhere on the ice is. Take a replacement handed to you from the bench or by a teammate, or pick up your own or a teammate's unbroken stick — never have one thrown to you, and never play with an opponent's or a goaltender's.

10. Wear a cage as a junior skater, full face if you want certainty otherwise, and never pair a helmet and cage that weren't sized for each other. Facial and head protection has several separate floors, and they don't conflict. Women may plausibly drop to a half visor from the season after their 18th birthday — though never in IHUK junior hockey, U19 included — but that reading is this document's own inference from a rule that never says so, and IIHF Rule 102.1 closes with "[p]layers without the mentioned protection are not allowed to participate in a game." BUIHA university hockey requires at minimum a half visor of every player in a BUIHA game — only a minimum, so an under-18 player fielded against BUIHA by a non-BUIHA opponent in a challenge match still stays under the IIHF's Under-18 full-face rule. Face cages are mandatory throughout junior hockey in England and Wales, and IHUK's junior leagues, U10 to U19, list "cage or full visor", but they also point to England Ice Hockey's Skaters' Equipment rules, where the cage rule sits — so a full visor does not meet them; where neither reaches you, the IIHF's Under-18 rule permits a full-face visor instead. So as a junior skater, 18 or over included, wear a cage — it satisfies every one of those rules. Three rules travel with the helmet itself: leave the ice immediately if it comes off, keep the chin-strap gap under 2.5 cm (about one finger), and size the cage to the helmet. And under all of them sits one ladder that is nobody's amendment — IIHF Rule 9.5, reproduced word for word in the Elite League's own Casebook: told to change a non-conforming item you get a warning, then a minor for Delay of Game if you refuse, a misconduct if you return to the ice unchanged, and a game misconduct the third time.

11. In women's and junior hockey, plan on a major ending your night, and take your age bands from this season's rules. In women's hockey any major penalty is an automatic ejection at every age, adult included — the rule states no age scope, and the Adult definition does not exempt you. Junior hockey reads the same way, U19 down to U10, though that extension is this document's inference rather than the rule's own words; both readings are the conservative ones, and confirming with your league costs nothing. Junior categories are British, unisex and set by birth year, and ⚠️ every band shifted by a full year for 2026-27 — take them from the current season's rules, never a table from last season. And at U12 and U10 the game itself is different, on a document neither rule book points you to: IHUK's Junior Rules of Competition puts U12 on a running clock with no icing calls, an offside that does not stop play — ⚠️ but you must still clear the zone when the official calls your team out, and not clearing it quickly is a delay-of-game penalty — lines changing on a 60-second buzzer and minors of three minutes, or four on four lines, served on your own shifts; U10 is cross-ice or half-ice; U14 and above is the ordinary full-ice, stop-clock IIHF game. ⚠️ Appendix D never says whether that U12 penalty time runs on the game clock or only while your line is out, nor whether your team plays short while you sit — ask your coach or the officials before the game.

12. Play as though your first major ends your game, adult or not. IIHF 20.4 ejects on a first major for any of the twenty infractions on its automatic-ejection table, with no injury required — stricter than the NHL, which requires an injury on six of its thirteen. A second, discretionary table adds five more (boarding, charging, elbowing, interference, tripping) at the referee's judgement; play as though the ejection follows the major there too. A relabelled penalty is not a lesser one — new-for-2026-27 instructions telling officials to call fouls by more specific names (cross-checking instead of checking-to-head, tripping instead of interference) change the name, not the tier. On first-major ejection, yours is the stricter book.

13. Two majors end your game, and so do two misconducts, on their own separate count — so keep count of your misconducts, not just your majors. IIHF Rule 20.4 carries both limbs; the NHL's equivalent trigger is a third major, with no misconduct-count limb at all. Under the In-House Rules the misconducts come from kit as easily as from fouls — a missing neck guard, a chin-strap gap wider than one finger once your team has been warned for one, playing on after your helmet comes off — so stay on your feet, because a dive there is a minor plus a 10-minute misconduct, where the Elite League's own Casebook keeps the plain minor and leaves the extra cost to a possible League fine. Domestic softening reaches the plain willing fight and nothing else — in NIHL, SNL and BUIHA Varsity under the In-House Rules — but not in women's hockey, where In-House Rule 101 ejects on any major at any age, so plan on a fight ending your game there — and separately in the Elite League, whose own Casebook holds the automatic game misconduct back from the plain, first, original willing fight — but not from a fighting major taken "after the original altercation has started", and never says whether the second major it counts is counted in the game or across the season; every other Rule 46 fighting offence — instigating, being the aggressor, sucker-punching, fighting outside the periods — still carries the IIHF's automatic ejection. Look up a fighting rule by its name, not its number: the 2026/27 book renumbers the whole of Rule 46. And the ejection is not the end of it: the referee must report every major after the game (Rule 20.7), and supplementary discipline can follow under Rule 28 whether or not the referee penalised the act on the night. ⚠️ What that discipline costs is not stated here — the IIHF Disciplinary Code has not been read — so treat a first major as the start of a process rather than the whole bill.

14. If an altercation starts while you are on the bench or in the penalty box, stay put until an official releases you. IIHF Rule 70.1 bars leaving for any reason during an altercation, scoped to no age and no competition — the domestic fighting rules don't touch what it costs you on the night. In the Elite League, leaving "to join an altercation" also carries an automatic minimum three-game suspension, written into the Fines and Suspensions list under the Casebook's Rule 46 rather than into Rule 70 — and Rule 70.1's bar is wider than that suspension limb, so the penalty can land where the suspension does not. An "altercation" needs only one penalty, not one punch, and the IIHF's own guidance penalises a player who leaves the box and merely skates around one without joining in — skating around it is not staying out of it. Your penalty expiring is not a release — your team must also be entitled to an extra skater, which coincident penalties often mean it isn't. Body Contact and Battles has the four rulebooks side by side.

15. Find out before the game how a tie is settled in your fixture — overtime is not universal in the competitions the In-House Rules reach, and their shootout is not the IIHF's. In-House Rule 84 confines overtime to NIHL fixtures, SNL fixtures whose regulations provide for it, and BUIHA fixtures designated VARSITY OT. Where a shootout is held it is three shooters a side, so the IIHF's five-different-shooters plan is the wrong one to bring. Do not plan on your best shooter taking two of those three. NIHL 1 and 2 open a repeat only "(AFTER the initial 3 shots have been taken)", and the SNL only after every full round of three; the NIHL National wording states no such limit, but it sits under the sudden-victory bullet, so name three shooters and ask. The NIHL National Playoff Final Weekend runs two procedures: semi-finals can end in a shootout; the Final cannot and plays sudden-death periods to a golden goal instead.

16. Know what medical cover your rink has before you need it — the rule is narrower than you'd expect. In England and Wales, clubs must provide a first aider, a checked first aid kit, a shared risk assessment and emergency plan, and a phone — but not an ambulance or a doctor, both of which are only recommended. The In-House Rules impose none of this, and elsewhere in Britain the only provision on the subject is the WNIHL regulations' recommendation that a club appoint a medical practitioner — so ask what cover your rink has. On numbers: call 999 for red flags or another significant injury, call 111 otherwise. The adopted guidance's red-flag list runs to fourteen, not to the handful most people can name: any loss of consciousness because of the injury; deteriorating consciousness; amnesia for events before or after the injury; increasing confusion or irritability; unusual behaviour change; any new neurological deficit — trouble understanding, speaking, reading or writing, decreased sensation, loss of balance, weakness or double vision; seizure or convulsion, limb twitching, or lying rigid or motionless from muscle spasm; severe or increasing headache; repeated vomiting; severe neck pain; any suspicion of a skull fracture; previous history of brain surgery or bleeding disorder; current blood-thinning therapy; and current drug or alcohol intoxication. ⚠️ Any one of them, in a player who has taken a blow to the head or a blow that moved the head, is the ambulance — and on the neck CRT6, the international concussion tool, fires lower still, so call 999 for any neck pain rather than waiting for it to become severe. Crossing between the two lists like that is this guide's reading of them side by side — neither CRT6 nor the adopted British guidance writes that rule — and it can only ever make you call sooner, never later. See §What medical cover you can expect at the rink for all fourteen in the guidance's own wording. A suspected neck injury should only be moved by a trained professional; the one exception CRT6 gives an untrained helper is moving them as far as keeping their airway clear needs. Leave the helmet on — that instruction comes from CRT6, the international concussion tool, not from any British document, and nothing found in the British documents contradicts it. And on coming back, that same adopted concussion guidance sets a floor: no return to competition before 21 days from injury — a bar underneath the medical decision rather than a substitute for it, and lifted only for elite and professional athletes on an Enhanced Care pathway. Training with a risk of head injury, a contact practice included, waits until you have been free of symptoms at rest for 14 days, and not before day 15. Body Contact and Battles has the full response.

Sources — retrieved 29 July 2026; the 2026-27 documents 29 August 2026

Rules: IHUK In-House Rules 2026-27, Revision 1 (published 25 July 2026) — the current British document, and the source for every amendment quoted above, including Rule 200, the junior age categories, Rule 101, the women's hockey specific playing rules whose ejection provision applies "in all cases", Rule 100.1, the women's age categories, the new Rules 10.3, 64 and 76, Section 4, the penalty-labelling instruction new for 2026-27 and read in the primary text on 1 September 2026, and Rules 9.8 and 12 — the detached-helmet, chin-strap, facial-protection and helmet–facemask-sizing provisions, all read in the primary text on 29 August 2026, together with the Jersey Requirements (Rule 9.3 Emphasis) bullets, read on 22 September 2026, whose jersey-coverage limb is the one place either edition amends the subject matter of IIHF Rule 9.5, and Rule 28, which sends supplementary discipline to the Discipline Policy of the home association, "EIH or SIHA", with the unnumbered Supplementary Discipline section after Appendix 2 that names the IHUK Department of Player Safety and the SIHA Disciplinary Committee, both read in the primary text on 29 September 2026; neither edition names Rule 9.5 or carries its escalation, searched on text with spacing and line breaks stripped · IHUK In-House Rules 2025-26, Revision 1 (published 27/10/25) — superseded, and read alongside the current edition only to establish what changed · IIHF Official Rule Book 2025/26 — Version 1.1, the edition the In-House Rules' Introduction names, and the foundation they amend; the whole of Rule 70, Rule 28.1 and Rule 46.2's definition of "altercation" read in the primary text on 1 September 2026, and Rules 20.7, 23.2, 23.5, 41.5, 42.5, 43.4, 45.5 and 60.7 — the reporting duty and the Disciplinary Measures clauses — read in the primary text on 25 September 2026, 41.5, 42.5, 45.5 and 60.7 word for word identical to each other and to the 2026/27 edition's, 43.4 the same sentence closing on a comma rather than a full stop; ⚠️ the IIHF Disciplinary Code that 23.5 and Rule 28 route to is not held here and has not been read, which is why no suspension length or tariff appears anywhere on this page — what was verified is that the route exists and that the referral is mandatory, not what it costs, and Rules 9.5 and 12.1 — the non-conforming-equipment ladder — read in the primary text on 22 September 2026 and found word for word identical in the 2026/27 edition · IIHF Official Rule Book 2026/27 — consulted for Rules 1.7, 20.4, 20.5, 28.1, the whole of Rule 46, the whole of Rule 60, 63.2(I) and 63.2(VI), 64.1, 64.2, 69.1 to 69.4, the whole of Rule 70, 76.3, 76.4, 76.6, 76.7, 82.2, 87.1, the whole of Appendix IV and the front-matter table of changes only; not read end to end for this document · IIHF Situation Handbook 2026/27 (PDF) — Version 1.0, June 2026, and its Foreword, read on 1 September 2026 for Rule 60, Situations 60.1 to 60.13 and Rule 70, Situations 70.1 to 70.6 only; Situation 60.13's operative wording is quoted above · IIHF Situation Handbook 2025/26 (PDF) — v1.1, August 2025, read on the same date for the same rule, together with its superseded v1.0 of June 2025: both stop at Situation 60.12, and their twelve Rule 60 situations are the same as the 2026/27 book's first twelve. Rule 70, Situations 70.1 to 70.6, were read in v1.1 on 1 September 2026 and are word for word the 2026/27 book's; v1.0 was not checked for Rule 70 · England Ice Hockey Rules & Regulations 2024-2025 — mostly governance, registration and club administration rather than playing rules; cited here for Rules 1.1, 3.1 and 17.1 (England Ice Hockey's territory — each names "England and Wales"), Rule 22.3 (the restricted-area suspension) and Rule 24 Skaters' Equipment (24.3 neck guards, 24.4 chin-strap gap, 24.5 junior face cages, 24.6 the shared warning), with Rule 24 read in the primary text on 29 September 2026 · Motorpoint EIHL Casebook 26-27, Version 1.1 (8 September 2026) — the Elite League's own document, linked from its Casebook page, which describes it as showing "where EIHL rule interpretations differ from those in the IIHF Rule Book"; it was read end to end in the primary text on 22 September 2026, Preamble and contents list through to Section 11; it is cited here for the EIHL's relationship to the IIHF book, for the Elite League's own neck-protection rule (Rules 9.5 and 9.12), for how game rules are enforced during the pre-game warm-up (Rule 86.6) and who "The Proper Authorities" are in an EIHL game (Rule 28), for the Elite League keeping video review and the Coach's Challenge (Rules 37 and 38), for its embellishment minor and its DOPS fining discretion (Rule 64), for the mandatory game misconduct on a major for boarding, charging or elbowing that injures an opponent's face or head (Rules 41 and 42, elbowing separately headed), for its own fighting section and its leaving-the-bench suspension (Rule 46), for its roster, bench-staffing and starting-line-up provisions (Rules 5 and 7), for its "EIHL Addition to the IIHF Rule Book" on goaltender interference (Rule 69), and for the absence of any Rule 27, any Rule 76 — so the face-off draw in an EIHL game is the IIHF book's unamended — and any body-checking provision. ⚠️ Three version stamps inside the one document disagree — the League's link text and the PDF's own version table read Version 1.1 of 8 September 2026, the PDF's Title metadata reads "Version 1.0 080926", and every page footer reads "SECTION D VERSION 1.0 010826". No winner is picked here; ask the League before relying on a Casebook detail · IHUK Rules of Competition 2026-27 — fetched and read in the primary text on 10 September 2026 (all four HTTP 200), and cited here for the body-checking format, and — from the Junior and U10 documents only — the U12 and U10 playing formats: Junior, whose Game Length & Format table sets U10 "Cross-ice jamboree, non-checking", U12 "Full ice, non-checking, running clock" and U14, U16 and U19 "Full ice, checking, stop clock", whose §1 states an order of precedence running from the IIHF Rules through the IHUK In-House Rules to the Junior Rules of Competition, and that "the IHUK wording will take precedence for domestic competition", and whose §2 states that "Junior leagues are solely owned and operated by IHUK and operate between U10s through to U19s". ⚠️ The U12 format is not in that table. The table's own footnote sends it elsewhere — "U12: Playing format, including line changes, off-side rules, and penalty administration—is set out in Appendix D" — and Appendix D – U12 Competition Format & Administration is the source for every U12 provision quoted in this document: its Line Setting, Line Allocation, Line Management, Game Format, Stoppages, Line Changes, Offsides & Frozen Pucks, Icing, Netminders and Penalties headings were read in the primary text on 16 September 2026, together with that pointer and §§1–2. §10 Equipment & Kit (Junior) — the full-face, neck-guard and non-playing-bench provisions and its U19 note — and the Player Eligibility clause for the U19 National Division ("regardless of being 18+") were also read in the primary text, and §10's opening "Baseline" sentence, which points to the Rules & Regulations' Skaters' Equipment section, was re-read on 29 September 2026. The PDF was refetched on 16 September 2026 and is byte-identical to the copy read on 10 September — HTTP 200, 1,098,281 bytes, SHA-256 match, ModDate 26 August 2026 — which matters because IHUK revises these in place at unchanged addresses · U10, the only one of the four to state the checking position as a rule rather than a format label — "Bodychecking is NOT allowed in U10 matches" — and also the source for the U10 playing format: its Duration and Timing of Games, Line Changes, Penalties, Face Off and reduced-ice provisions, read in the primary text on 16 September 2026 · NIHL 1 and 2 — "NIHL | 3 x 20 minute periods | Full ice, checking, stop clock"; ⚠️ this document is titled National League Division 1 and 2 Rules of Competition, and the divisional matrix at its Appendix A sets out Divisions 1 and 2 only. Its Game Length and Format row is labelled simply "NIHL", and it states no format for NIHL National by name: the two provisions that mention NIHL National at all place it a tier above, in a definition of "senior team" for ice-time priority — "Elite League or NIHL National teams, in respect of NIHL 1 clubs" — and in a minimum filming standard, "NIHL National: Level 2 or higher". No Rules of Competition for NIHL National was read for this document, so nothing here settles whether NIHL National is checking or non-checking · WNIHL — "WNIHL U16 … Full ice, non-checking, stop clock" and "WNIHL … Full ice, non-checking, stop clock", and the only medical-cover provision any of the four carries, its Section 5 Team Eligibility bullet that clubs "are strongly recommended to appoint a registered and qualified medical practitioner", read in the primary text on 23 September 2026. All four were searched with spacing and line breaks stripped, and the quotations above are every body-checking statement any of them contains; none attaches a rule number to it, and no Rules of Competition was found or read for the EIHL, BUIHA or Scottish domestic competitions outside the junior structure — the EIHL Casebook cited above is a playing-rule document rather than a competition regulation, and contains no body-checking provision at all · USA Hockey Official Playing Rules 2025-29 (PDF) — Rule 304(g), the neck laceration protector required of "[a]ll players, including goalkeepers, in all age classifications except Adults", and Rule 615(c), the game misconduct "(for all age classifications)" for a player who "doesn't wear their helmet/facemask as designed and the helmet/facemask is removed during an altercation", read in the primary text on 1 September 2026 · USA Hockey Official Rules and Casebook 2025-29 (PDF) — Rule 304, Situation 14 and Rule 615, Situation 19, the one-finger chin-strap test, together with the note applying to Situations 14-20 that extends Rule 615(c) to "any altercation where at least one player will receive a penalty"; read in the primary text on 1 September 2026 · Hockey Canada Playing Rules 2026-2028 (PDF) — Rule 3.6(c), the BNQ-certified throat protector required "for players registered in minor and female hockey", the two North American requirements the British one is compared against in §Neck protection is mandatory, for everyone — and the In-House Rules give no warning · the IHUK Coaching Regulations and Requirements 2026-2027, linked in full below — §9 Team Requirements was read in the primary text on 22 September 2026 for its §9.3 Kit & Equipment coach PPE clause and the coach’s player-equipment duty; the rest of that document was not read, and it binds coaches rather than competitions

Medical cover and concussion — retrieved 31 August 2026, the red-flag panel read in full 19 September 2026: England Ice Hockey Rules & Regulations 2024-2025 Section 33, Match Day Protocols — Rules 33.3, 33.5, 33.6, 33.7, 33.8 and 33.9, the source for the minimum standards, the recommended practitioner and the ambulance provision, all read in the primary text · England Ice Hockey — Safer Sport — the current restatement of the 33.5 minimum standards in rendered text, and the source for England Ice Hockey's adoption of the concussion guidance · UK Concussion Guidelines for Non-Elite (Grassroots) Sport — the Sport and Recreation Alliance's own page, from which the November 2024 update downloads; the source for the 999, 111 and suspected-neck-injury sentences, and for the 21-day bar at §What medical cover you can expect at the rink — its Key points read "[a]ll concussions should be managed individually, but there should be no return to competition before 21 days from injury", and its graduated return programme puts "(NOT before day 21) …" against Stage 6, "Return to sports competition", and states the bar a second time in the programme itself: "[t]his stage should not be reached before day 21* (at the earliest)". The day-0 sentence above is that asterisk: the programme's footnote reads "[t]he day of the concussion is Day 0", and its worked examples apply it — a concussion on Saturday 3 June is Day 0, and the earliest return to competition is Day 21, Saturday 24 June. The training bar is Stage 5: training "involving head impacts or where there may be a risk of head injury" only "[w]hen free of symptoms at rest from the recent concussion for 14 days" (p. 19), and the FAQs' "Stage 5 therefore cannot start until Day 15 at the earliest" (p. 23), both read in the November 2024 PDF on 28 September 2026. The rest of that Stage 6 cell adds further conditions, every one of which delays a return rather than advancing it, and all of which are for the healthcare professional managing it rather than for the player. That programme's own Notes carry the single carve-out: some athletes, "as happens in Elite and Professional sport", are managed by healthcare professionals experienced in sports concussion management on an individualised plan, and "[a]thletes who are managed in such Enhanced Care pathways may be formally cleared for an earlier return to competition"; those passages read in the November 2024 PDF on 10 September 2026 · also the source for its own red-flag list, all fourteen entries of which are quoted above — "Any loss of consciousness because of the injury", "Deteriorating consciousness (more drowsy)", "Amnesia (no memory) for events before or after the injury", "Increasing confusion or irritability", "Unusual behaviour change", "Any new neurological deficit" with its five listed examples, "Seizure/convulsion or limb twitching or lying rigid/motionless due to muscle spasm", "Severe or increasing headache", "Repeated vomiting", "Severe neck pain", "Any suspicion of a skull fracture (e.g. cut, bruise, swelling, severe pain at site of injury)", "Previous history of brain surgery or bleeding disorder", "Current 'blood-thinning' therapy" and "Current drug or alcohol intoxication" — together with the instruction that precedes them, "urgent medical assessment from an appropriate Healthcare Professional onsite or in a hospital Accident and Emergency (A&E) Department using emergency ambulance transfer if necessary". ⚠️ That panel is set in two columns and its columns interleave in any text extraction, so a phrase search across it returns fragments; it was read positionally from the page instead. The "Tonic posturing – lying rigid/motionless due to muscle spasm (may appear to be unconscious)" wording quoted above comes from the same guidance's visible clues list, not its red-flag list. All fourteen entries, and the instruction sentence above them, were read positionally from the November 2024 PDF on 19 September 2026 · Concussion Recognition Tool 6 (CRT6), Echemendia RJ et al., Br J Sports Med 2023;57:692-694 (doi:10.1136/bjsports-2023-107021) — the source of "Do not remove helmet (if present) or other equipment", one of five instructions in its "Remember" box. The two content pages of the published PDF are images: a text extraction returns the journal's own stamp and page furniture and none of the tool's words, so both pages were rendered and read by eye on 31 August 2026 · IHUK Coaching Regulations and Requirements 2026-2027 — §5, the mandatory Basic First Aid certificate and the note that the accepted online courses confer no "qualified first aider" status · IHUK Club Committee, Team Managers, Bench Support & Off-Ice Officials Regulations 2026-2027 — §7, the recommended team medic and the qualification-and-insurance requirement on anyone so designated

Governing bodies: England Ice Hockey — Rules and Regulations · English Ice Hockey Association — Wikipedia (for the EIHA/EIH renaming only)

James Bloom, "UK and England Rules", Learning to Play the Game. https://learn-ice-hockey.com/foundation/uk_rules/ — licensed CC BY-NC 4.0.

<a href="https://learn-ice-hockey.com/foundation/uk_rules/">UK and England Rules</a> by <a href="https://github.com/jamesdbloom">James Bloom</a>, licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC 4.0</a>.

@misc{foundation-uk-rules,
  author  = {James Bloom},
  title   = {UK and England Rules},
  howpublished = {Learning to Play the Game},
  url     = {https://learn-ice-hockey.com/foundation/uk_rules/},
  note    = {Licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}