Expect WCHA games to be a little longer this season. The league recently said out an explanation of its new timeout policy.

This season there will be three official one-minute timeouts per period in all exhibition and regular-season games and in the first round of the WCHA playoffs.

The timeouts will come at the first stoppage of play 5, 10 and 15 min. into a period.

But there are exceptions. There won’t be timeouts during a power play and the league is discouraging them during four-on-four situtations.

There won’t be official timeouts after icing or in overtime.

During these timeouts, players will be able to go to the bench for words of wisdom but, with 15 seconds left, they have to start skating back to faceoff positions. So coaches will have to talk fast.

The puck will be dropped at the one-minute mark.

Got all that?

SCHEDULE TALK

Nine of the 10 WCHA teams play a Canadian team the first weekend of the season, Oct. 2-4. The Gophers face British Columbia on Sunday, Oct. 4 after one day of official practice.

The only WCHA team idle that weekend is Wisconsin. Before coming to Mariucci, British Columbia plays at UMD on Saturday.

The following weekend, Oct. 9-10, eight WCHA teams play nonconference games. Maybe the most interesting game of the bunch finds St. Cloud State at Miami (Ohio), which lost in the NCAA title game last season.

Idle this weekend are the Gophers and Wisconsin.

The U opens the regular season Oct. 16-17 at North Dakota, the defending MacNaughton Cup champion.

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