Delayed Penalty in Hockey: Why the Referee's Arm Goes Up

A defenseman on the penalty kill hooks a winger at the blue line, the referee's arm shoots straight up, and before the crowd has finished groaning the goalie at the far end is skating hard for his bench. For the next fifteen or twenty seconds one team plays with six skaters and an empty net, and the other cannot touch the puck without ending the play. That is a delayed penalty in hockey, and it is one of the few moments in the NHL when the rules openly hand one side a free attack.

The rule itself fits in two sentences. When a player on the team that does not have the puck commits a foul, the referee signals the penalty by raising an arm and lets play continue until the offending team gains possession and control of the puck, at which point the whistle blows and the penalty is assessed. If the team that was fouled scores before that happens, a minor penalty is cancelled, while a major, a match penalty or the second half of a double minor still goes on the clock.

Everything else on this page follows from those two sentences: why the goalie leaves, what counts as control, what happens when the fouled team scores on itself, and why a goal during the delay shows up in the box score as even strength rather than a power play.

How a delayed penalty works under the NHL rulebook

The NHL's rule on calling penalties draws a line between the two teams on the ice at the moment of the foul. If the player who commits the infraction is on the team in possession and control of the puck, the referee blows the whistle at once. There is nothing to protect. The offending team had the puck, the whistle takes it away, and the other team gets a power play.

If the offender is on the team without the puck, an immediate whistle would punish the wrong side. The fouled team might be in the middle of a rush or a cycle down low, and stopping play would cost it that chance. So the referee raises the non-whistle arm straight above his head and holds it there. Play goes on. The arm comes down only when the offending team gains possession and control, or when play stops for some other reason.

The signal and who gives it

Any of the on-ice officials can see a foul, but only a referee calls a penalty in the NHL. Linesmen deal with offside, icing and faceoffs and can report a narrow set of infractions to the referees. The raised arm is the referee's signal and it is universal across professional, college and amateur hockey in North America. Once the whistle goes, the referee points to the offender, gives the signal for the specific foul (two fists stacked for high-sticking, a tugging motion for hooking) and reports to the penalty timekeeper.

Every kind of penalty can be delayed

The delay is not reserved for minors. A referee raises his arm for a minor, a double minor, a major, a match penalty or a misconduct, and for a foul that will draw a penalty shot. What changes between them is what a goal during the delay does, which is covered further down.

1. 1FoulA player on the team without the puck commits an infraction the referee will penalize.
2. 2Arm upThe referee raises his non-whistle arm and lets play continue.
3. 3Extra attackerThe fouled team usually pulls its goalie for a sixth skater.
4. 4ControlThe offending team gains possession and control of the puck, or play stops for another reason.
5. 5WhistleThe referee stops play, identifies the offender and reports the penalty.
6. 6FaceoffPlay restarts, normally in the offending team's defensive zone, with the penalty on the clock.

The sequence under the NHL rulebook for a foul committed by the team without the puck. Any normal stoppage, such as offside by the fouled team or the puck leaving the rink, also ends the delay.

The design choice behind all of this is simple and older than the modern NHL. Hockey decided long ago that a penalty should never become an advantage for the team that commits it. The delayed call is how the rulebook keeps that promise when the foul happens away from the puck or against a team that is attacking.

Why the goalie sprints to the bench for an extra attacker

Watch the fouled team's goalie the instant the arm goes up. In most NHL buildings he is already moving, sometimes before the crowd has worked out what the referee saw. He gets to the bench, a forward jumps over the boards, and the attack becomes six skaters against five.

The reason is that the empty net is close to safe. The offending team cannot score in the normal way, because the moment one of its players controls the puck, the whistle blows. A defenseman who wins a loose puck along the boards cannot turn and fire it 150 feet into the vacant net; by the time he has it on his stick, the play is already dead. The risk that normally keeps a goalie in his crease, the long shot into an empty net, has been taken off the table by the rule itself.

When the goalie stays home

Not every delayed call produces a sprint. If the foul happens deep in the fouled team's own zone, with the puck behind its own net, a goalie leaving the crease would leave an open goal right next to the play. A deflection or a bad pass in that spot is a far bigger danger than it is 150 feet away. Coaches leave the decision to the goalie and to the situation, and most goalies stay put when the puck is in their own end and go when it is in the neutral or offensive zone.

Who comes on

The sixth attacker is usually a forward, often one with a good shot from the slot or the point. Some teams send whoever is next up on the line rotation, others send a designated player. The extra skater has to arrive within the line-change rules; a player who jumps on too early, while the goalie is still well short of the bench, risks a too-many-men call against the team that was fouled. Our page on the too many men on the ice penalty explains the five-foot zone that applies to every change, and the sixth-attacker change is no exception.

A delayed penalty is the best-known use of the extra attacker, but it is a cousin of the late-game decision to pull the goalie when trailing. The difference is risk. Late in a game, an empty net can be scored into from anywhere; during a delayed call, the only way it gets scored into is by the fouled team itself. The full late-game version, with the timing and the numbers coaches use, is in our guide to pulling the goalie in hockey.

Possession and control, not a touch

The whole delayed-penalty system turns on one word in Rule 15 of the NHL rulebook: the whistle goes when the team to be penalized "gains control of the puck." Broadcasters usually say possession and control, and the book defines both. Possession belongs to the last player, other than a goalie, to touch the puck. Control is more demanding: the rulebook defines it as the act of propelling the puck with the stick, hand or feet, and officials read it as a player who has the puck and can do something deliberate with it.

That distinction matters because pucks bounce off penalty killers all the time during a delay. A defender who blocks a point shot has touched the puck. He has not controlled it, so play goes on. A forward who gets a stick on a cross-ice pass and deflects it into the corner has touched it, too. Play goes on. The whistle is reserved for the moment the offending team actually has the puck.

Rebounds off the goalie

The most common grey area involves the offending team's goalie. A save that kicks the puck back into the slot is not control. The fouled team gets the rebound and keeps attacking with six. If the goalie covers the puck or catches it cleanly and holds it, that is control and the whistle blows.

The glance off an offending skater

A puck that ricochets off a penalty killer's skate, glove or body, without any deliberate play by him, does not stop play. What officials look for is a decision: a player settling the puck, carrying it, or passing it on purpose. A defender who swats at a loose puck and knocks it into the neutral zone is a closer call, and referees differ on it. A deliberate clearing attempt that gets the puck out of the zone looks like control. A desperate poke that merely moves it does not.

Situation during the delay	Does play stop?	Why
Penalty killer blocks a shot and the puck rolls away	No	A touch is not control
Offending goalie makes a save and the rebound goes back into the slot	No	A rebound is not control
Offending goalie catches the puck and holds it	Yes	Holding the puck is control
Penalty killer settles the puck on his stick	Yes	That is possession and control
Fouled team shoots the puck out of the rink	Yes	A normal stoppage ends the delay
Fouled team goes offside	Yes	A normal stoppage ends the delay

The final two rows catch people out. The delay is not a time-out from the rest of the rulebook. If the team with the extra attacker goes offside or puts the puck over the glass, play stops and the penalty is assessed exactly as it would have been. The fouled team does not lose its power play by doing so; it loses the rest of its six-on-five attack.

What happens if you score on a delayed penalty

Here the rulebook does something that looks arbitrary until you see the logic. If the fouled team scores while the referee's arm is up, the goal counts and a minor penalty is not assessed at all (Rule 15.2). The offender does not go to the box. A major or a match penalty is still served in full. On a double minor, Rule 18.2 washes out one of the two minors; the penalty is announced as a double minor, but only two minutes go on the penalty clock.

The principle tying those outcomes together: a goal during the delay erases exactly what a power-play goal would have erased. A team on a power play that scores ends the minor penalty it was playing against. It does not end a major, which runs its full five minutes regardless of how many goals are scored. And it ends only the first half of a double minor; the second half then starts. The delayed penalty rule simply applies that logic to a penalty that has not yet started. The fouled team has already collected the reward a power play would have given it, so the minor has nothing left to do.

Minor0minutes

Double minor2minutes

Major5minutes

Match penalty5minutes

NHL treatment of a single signaled penalty when the non-offending team scores before the whistle. A match penalty also ejects the offender; misconducts are assessed whatever happens.

Show the numbers

Penalty time still served after the fouled team scores during the delay

Item	Value
Minor	0minutes
Double minor	2minutes
Major	5minutes
Match penalty	5minutes

Misconducts and game misconducts

A misconduct is a ten-minute personal penalty that does not leave a team shorthanded. It is assessed regardless of a goal, because it was never about the team's strength on the ice. A game misconduct sends the player to the dressing room either way.

The penalty-shot foul

A foul that would draw a penalty shot, such as a player hauled down from behind on a clear breakaway, works a little differently. The penalty shot exists to restore a lost scoring chance, so if the fouled player recovers and gets a reasonable chance anyway, or a teammate does, the rulebook says no penalty shot should be awarded; the referee signals the ordinary penalty instead, and it is assessed only if no goal is scored on the play. Where the referee has signaled a penalty shot and the fouled team scores before he can stop play, the goal is the reward. If that team was already on a power play against minors, Rule 15.4 turns the signaled penalty-shot foul into an ordinary penalty and ends the first minor already being served. The full set of penalty-shot triggers is in our guide to NHL penalty shot rules.

Overtime

In NHL regular-season overtime, which is played three-on-three, a goal during a delayed penalty simply ends the game. The penalty never matters. If the delay ends without a goal, the penalized team plays short and the fouled team adds a skater rather than removing one, so a minor in overtime produces four-on-three. Rule 84 covers the nightmare version, too: a team that pulls its goalie for a delayed call in overtime and shoots the puck into its own net has lost the game. It keeps the point it earned for reaching overtime, though, because the rule that strips that point from a team losing with its goalie pulled makes an exception for a delayed penalty. Our explainer on NHL overtime and shootout rules covers that format.

The own-goal trap with an empty net

There is exactly one way for the penalized team to get a goal while the arm is up, and it has nothing to do with its own attack. The fouled team scores on itself.

It happens more often than it should, and it is never the penalized team's doing. The team with six skaters works the puck around the offensive zone, the penalty killers deny the slot, and someone decides to regroup. A defenseman at the point sends the puck back toward the neutral zone for a teammate who is not there, or who misplays it, and it slides the length of the ice into the empty net. These goals turn up in the NHL often enough that every regular viewer has seen one, and they make the highlight reels for the worst reasons.

Why the goal counts

Rule 78.5 says plainly that during the delayed calling of a penalty, the offending team cannot score unless the non-offending team shoots the puck into its own net. When that happens the goal is allowed, and the penalty is still assessed afterward. The offending team, in other words, gets the goal and still plays shorthanded.

Who gets credit

Under the NHL's scoring rules, a goal that a team puts into its own net is credited to the player on the other side who last touched the puck. During a delayed call, that is usually a penalty killer who got a piece of an earlier shot or pass, sometimes the player who committed the foul. If several seconds have gone by and the last offending player to touch it was on the ice well before, the official scorer works back through the play to find him. It is entirely possible for a player to be credited with a goal while sitting on his own bench, or while skating toward the penalty box to serve the penalty that the delay was protecting.

The scorer records it as an empty-net goal. It is not charged to the goalie who went to the bench, because empty-net goals do not count against a goalie's record.

Can the penalized team score any other way?

No. A shot is a deliberate act with the puck, and the offending team needs control to take one, which stops the play first. The rulebook also closes the accidental routes. Rule 78.5 says a deflection off an offending player, or any physical action by an offending player that causes the puck to enter the fouled team's goal, is not a legal goal; officials are told to stop play before the puck goes in where they can, and the signaled penalty is then assessed. So a pass from the fouled team that clips a penalty killer's skate and slides into the empty net does not count. The penalized team's only route to a goal runs through the other team putting the puck in its own net.

A delayed call against a team that is already shorthanded

Now combine the two situations. A team is killing a minor penalty, four skaters against five, and one of the four commits a second foul away from the puck. Up goes the arm. The power-play team, already a man up, pulls its goalie and attacks six against four.

If the power-play team scores during this delay, two things are on the table: the minor already being served, and the minor that has just been signaled. The goal does not erase both. Under Rule 15.4, the goal ends the minor penalty that is already being served, the way any power-play goal would, and the new penalty is then assessed. (If more than one minor is running, the one that ends is the one with the least time left on the clock.) The player who was in the box comes out; the player who committed the second foul goes in. The team is still shorthanded after the faceoff, but by one skater rather than two, and the clock on the new minor starts fresh.

The logic is the same principle as before, applied consistently. A power-play goal ends one minor. During the delay, the penalty already running is the one that a power-play goal would end, so that is the one that goes. The new penalty has not been touched by any goal and goes on the clock in full.

A major changes the arithmetic. If the team is shorthanded because of a major or match penalty rather than a minor, a goal cannot end that major, so Rule 15.4 applies the ordinary logic instead: the newly signaled minor is not imposed, and the major keeps running.

Why the goal is a power-play goal here

Because a penalty was already on the clock when it was scored, the goal is recorded as a power-play goal, unlike the even-strength goal scored during an ordinary delay. That matters for the penalty-killing and power-play percentages the league publishes, and for plus-minus, which does not count power-play goals.

Situation when the arm goes up	Fouled team scores during the delay	What goes on the clock afterward
Five-on-five, minor signaled	Goal counts	Nothing; the minor is cancelled
Five-on-five, double minor signaled	Goal counts	Two minutes, the second minor
Five-on-five, major signaled	Goal counts	Five minutes, served in full
Penalty-killing team commits a second minor	Goal counts	The minor being served ends; the new minor is assessed
Two minors signaled against the same team	Goal counts	One minor is cancelled; the other is assessed

The three-skater floor

A team can never be reduced below three skaters in the NHL, which is why a five-on-three is the biggest man advantage hockey allows. When a third penalty arrives while two players from the same team are already in the box, the rulebook delays the start of the third penalty's time until the first of the other two expires. A substitute goes on so the team stays at three skaters, and the third player's penalty begins when a teammate's ends. The NHL rulebook calls this a delayed penalty too, in a rule of its own, and it is a completely different thing from the raised arm. It is a delay in when a penalty starts, not in when it is called.

Delayed penalties against both teams, and two calls against one

A raised arm does not freeze the other team's obligations. If the fouled team commits an infraction of its own during the delay, the situation changes immediately, because that team has the puck. A foul by the team in possession and control draws an instant whistle.

Say a winger is tripped, the arm goes up, and ten seconds later a player on the fouled team crosschecks a penalty killer in front of the net. The referee blows the whistle at once. There are now two penalties, one on each side, and the rulebook's coincidental-penalty provisions decide what happens. Two minors at five-on-five typically produce four-on-four hockey. The fouled team has thrown away its power play, and it did so with a stick foul in the one moment it had all the advantages. Our explainer on NHL penalties from a minor to a match penalty covers the coincidental rules in detail.

Two delayed calls against the same team

The more common double situation is one team piling up fouls while chasing the puck. A defender hooks, the arm goes up, and before the penalty killers can get control another defender trips someone. The referee keeps his arm up and remembers both. When the offending team finally gains control, both penalties are assessed and the fouled team starts a five-on-three.

If the fouled team scores before the whistle, the goal cancels one of the two minors and the other is assessed. Rule 15.2 leaves the choice to the offending team: its captain tells the referee which minor is washed out. That is the same principle again: one power-play goal ends one minor. A team that commits two fouls during the same delay and gives up a goal still goes to the penalty kill.

The penalty killer who keeps fouling

Watch a long delay in a playoff game and the pattern is familiar: tired penalty killers who cannot get control start reaching. Every hook, hold and slash adds another penalty to the referee's list. The rulebook does not offer any incentive to stop, because the arm stays up regardless. The only incentive is the five-on-three that waits at the end.

• Fouled team
• Penalized team

Delay at even strength, goalie pulled6skaters5skaters

Delay while already shorthanded, goalie pulled6skaters4skaters

After one minor is assessed5skaters4skaters

After two minors are assessed5skaters3skaters

Skaters only; goalies excluded. The first two rows show the delay itself with the fouled team's goalie pulled, the last two the strength once the whistle blows and the penalties go on the clock.

Show the numbers

Skaters on the ice in common delayed-penalty situations

Item	Fouled team	Penalized team
Delay at even strength, goalie pulled	6skaters	5skaters
Delay while already shorthanded, goalie pulled	6skaters	4skaters
After one minor is assessed	5skaters	4skaters
After two minors are assessed	5skaters	3skaters

Six-on-five tactics while the arm is up

The delay is the closest thing hockey has to a free possession, and good teams treat it that way. The guiding instruction is short. Do not give the puck away.

That sounds obvious. It changes how players behave. In a normal shift, a forward will chip the puck into the corner and chase it, accepting a fifty-fifty battle. During a delayed penalty, a chip that a penalty killer gets his stick on and controls ends the play, so attackers hold the puck longer, pass more, and avoid the low-percentage play along the boards. With six skaters against five, there is always an open man somewhere; the job is to find him before the penalty killers get a stick on the puck.

Shooting through traffic

The extra skater usually stands in front of the net. A point shot through a screen is the most common delayed-penalty scoring chance, and the blocked shot is less costly than it would be at even strength: a block is a touch, not control, so the puck often stays live. Teams that shoot early and often during a delay accept a few blocks in exchange for rebounds.

Regrouping in the neutral zone

If the penalty killers clog the slot, the fouled team can carry the puck back out of the zone and come in again. With the goalie on the bench, no one is defending the net, which makes the long back pass the single most dangerous play in the sequence. A puck that skips over a teammate's stick at center ice can roll all the way into the empty net. Coaches teach the regroup with a short pass to a defenseman who stays inside the near blue line, never a hard pass toward the far end.

How long it lasts

A delay can end in two seconds or stretch beyond thirty. The fouled team is not wasting anything by using all of it, because the power play begins when the whistle goes, not when the foul happened. A delayed minor that runs for half a minute is, in effect, half a minute of extra-attacker hockey followed by a full two-minute power play. That is why penalty killers will dive at a loose puck the moment the arm goes up. Ending the delay quickly is the one thing they control.

The power play that follows is a separate problem, and our explainer on how the power play works in hockey covers what happens once the penalized player is actually in the box.

Where the faceoff goes once the whistle finally blows

When a delayed penalty ends with the offending team gaining control, the referee stops play and the penalty puts the fouled team on the power play. The NHL rule on faceoff locations then puts the draw at one of the two faceoff spots in the penalized team's defensive zone. The power-play team starts its advantage in the offensive zone, with a chance to win the draw and set up immediately.

That is the general rule, and it covers the large majority of delayed calls. Rules 15.5 and 76.2 list exactly three exceptions. If the penalty is assessed after a goal, play restarts at center ice, as it always does after a goal. If the penalty is assessed at the end or start of a period, the faceoff is at center. And if players from the power-play team, such as the point men or someone off the bench, skate into the attacking zone beyond the outer edge of the faceoff circles during a scrum after the whistle, the draw moves out to the neutral zone. Separately, when both sides commit infractions on the play, the faceoff goes to the nearest spot in the zone where play stopped, because no team has been handed a power play.

Why the end zone

The end-zone faceoff gives a penalty the same weight wherever it was committed. A hook at center ice and a hook in the slot both hand the power play an offensive-zone draw, so the advantage does not begin with twenty seconds of carrying the puck up the ice against a set penalty kill. The penalty costs the same regardless of where it happened. The team awarded the power play chooses which of the two end-zone dots it wants. The detailed placement rules are on our hockey faceoff rules page.

The fouled team's own stoppage

If the delay ends because the fouled team itself goes offside or puts the puck out of play, the penalty still produces a power play, and the power-play faceoff location rule still applies. The fouled team gives up the rest of its extra-attacker time but keeps the end-zone draw that comes with the advantage. Our explainer on icing and offside in hockey covers the offside rule that most often ends delays early.

How a goal on a delayed call is recorded

This is where box scores puzzle people. A goal scored while the referee's arm is up, at six skaters against five, is an even-strength goal. It is not a power-play goal.

The reason is that a power play exists only when a penalty is on the clock. During the delay, no penalty has been assessed; the referee has merely signaled one. The teams have equal numbers of skaters under the rulebook's terms, even though one has temporarily traded its goalie for an attacker. The NHL's scoresheet lists the goal as an even-strength goal, and the minor that was signaled is not served.

What that does to the numbers

Several statistics move because of this. The goal does not count toward the team's power-play goals, and it does not count against the other team's penalty kill. The penalty kill shows no time on ice for that minor, because the minor was never served. And because the goal is even strength, it counts toward plus-minus: the six skaters on the ice for the fouled team each get a plus, and the five penalty killers each get a minus. On the plus-minus page, our guide to plus-minus in hockey explains why power-play goals are excluded from the stat and why this goal is not.

The own goal in the stat line

An own goal into the empty net during a delay is an even-strength, empty-net goal for the penalized team. The fouled team's goalie, who was on the bench, is not charged with it. The skater credited with the goal gets a goal in his career totals, and the five or six players on the ice for each side receive plus-minus marks just as they would for any even-strength goal.

Exceptions

When the team is already shorthanded and a second penalty is delayed, the goal is a power-play goal, as described above, because a penalty was on the clock. That is the one common delayed-penalty goal that shows up in the power-play column.

College and international hockey: the same idea in different books

Every major North American and international rulebook uses the delayed penalty. The raised arm, the extra attacker, the minor cancelled by a goal and the major served regardless are common to the NHL, the NCAA's rules for men's and women's college hockey, USA Hockey's amateur rulebook and the International Ice Hockey Federation book used at the Olympics and world championships. A fan who understands the NHL version understands the core of every other one.

The differences are at the edges, and they change because each rulebook is revised on its own schedule. The NCAA publishes its ice hockey rules on a two-year cycle. The IIHF revises its book on a multi-year cycle. The NHL can amend its rules every offseason, and its rulebook is reissued each season. Because of that, the safest statement is a structural one: before relying on a specific detail of a college or international game, check the current edition of that rulebook rather than assuming the NHL wording applies.

Touch versus control

The detail that matters most is what ends the delay. The NHL standard is control: the whistle waits until the offending team is propelling the puck, not merely touching it. Each rulebook words its trigger in its own language, and a trigger that treats any contact as enough would make delays shorter and extra-attacker time rarer. When a college or international delay ends faster than an NHL fan expects, the wording of that book's delayed-penalty rule is the first thing to check.

How the goal is recorded elsewhere

College box scores and international game sheets each classify goals by situation using their own codes and conventions, so a delayed-penalty goal may not carry the same label it would on an NHL scoresheet. The underlying event is the same; the label is not.

Penalties that come with an ejection

College hockey attaches ejection to more fouls than the NHL does; fighting, for one, is a disqualification in the college game rather than a five-minute major. That does not change the delay itself, but it changes what a fan watching a college game should expect when the arm goes up for a serious foul: the player may be gone for the night whether or not a goal is scored during the delay.

What does not change

The logic does not change. In every rulebook, the delayed call exists so that a team does not lose an attack because the other side broke a rule. In every rulebook, a goal during the delay is treated as having already collected the reward that a minor penalty was meant to produce. A reader who wants the broader map of hockey rules and leagues can start on the ice hockey section of the site.

Why delayed-penalty goals are undervalued, and what crowds misread

Delayed penalties produce two kinds of memorable moments: the goal that a team scores with six skaters, and the own goal that a team scores into its own empty net. Both happen every NHL season, and both are covered by the same handful of sentences in the rulebook.

The six-skater goal is the more ordinary event, and it is easy to miss its importance. Because it is even strength, it does not appear in a team's power-play numbers. A team that is good at scoring during delays has a hidden advantage in the standings that never shows up in the special-teams tables, and there is a reasonable argument that the NHL's public power-play statistics understate the value of drawing penalties for exactly that reason. The fouled team gets the six-on-five chance whether or not it scores, and if it does score, the power play it would have had is gone, so the stat line looks like an ordinary goal.

The own goal as a teaching tool

The own goal is the cautionary tale coaches show at practice. Most are variations on the same play: a regroup that is too ambitious, a pass sent back toward center with nobody to receive it, a puck that bounces over a stick. Teams drill the short regroup for exactly this reason. Players are told that during a delay, the back pass goes to the defenseman nearest the blue line and never past him.

What fans get wrong

The most common misreading in a crowd is the assumption that the penalized team cannot touch the puck at all. It can touch it as often as it likes; it simply cannot control it. A penalty killer who blocks a shot has not stopped play. A goalie who makes a save and lets the rebound go has not stopped play. The fans who groan when a rebound squirts out are usually right that the moment is dangerous and wrong about why: the play continues because nobody on the penalized team has control, not because the referee missed the touch.

The second misreading runs the other way: the belief that the empty net is a gamble. Coaches do not see it that way, and the numbers on the ice explain why. The only goal the penalized team can get is one the fouled team gifts it, and a team that keeps its passes short almost never does.