I thought this issue was brought up on the board, but apparently it was sent in
an e-mail and I responded to it. It was early this morning, and sometimes I
have difficulty telling whether something is a personal e-mail or someting is
from this board.

The issue--a team is trapping your player in the back of the pack, and you are
more than 20 feet in front of the official pack. How do you rejoin the pack
that has come to a near standstill. Are the options skating clockwise to get
back to the pack, or skating to catch the pack from behind.

First of all my understanding is that a skater in front of the pack must rejoing
the pack at the front of a pack. Skating around counter clockwise to catch up
the the rear of the pack would be illegal in my opinion. So, you can skate back
to the pack clockwise as long as you don't block.

I used to think if the pack had your player trapped you could just stop and
apply a booty block to the front of the pack. But that would be incorrect since
you may not block from a standstill position. So that means if you are going to
block with a frontal block you must be moving. Probably your safest attack
against a trapping wall is from the side.

And this brings up another question. If the trapping blockers come to a
complete standstill, how does a trapped skater get out of the trap. Well, first
of all, it could be argued that if the trap group of three skaters comes to a
complete stop and the trap is positionally blocking, that would be illegal if
that trap came to a standstill because they would be blocking which is illegal.
However, you would have to rely upon the officiating crew to interpret the rule
in that manner.

Another possibility would be to try to split defenders at a standstill, and if
you could hit their gap before they could get rolling. If they throw a hip or
shoulder without having taken a step, I would interpret that is blocking at a
standstill. Again, you would have to rely upon the interpretation of the
officiating crew.

Or if there is an opening at the back of the trap, a trapped skater could skate
clockwise to get out of the trap and then try to gain forward speed to try to
get by the blockers. But the skaters couldn't initiate contact or block while
skating clockwise.

This also assumes that the trapping portion of the pack is the majority of the
pack and has not split the pack. In the case of a 3-1 trap, if the front
portion of the pack is over 10 feet from the back portion and also has four
blockers that would be a split pack, and in the case of the trapping portion of
the pack slowing things down, they could be liable to a series of penalties as
the officials saw fit for destroying the pack, not to mention ruling the pack
split and everyone out of play. But if the back portion of the pack has a
majority of the pack, I can't see how this severely slowed down part of the pack
would be illegal under 4.0.

I should also say I would prefer faster skating packs, and I think that 4.0 is a
substantial improvement over the previous 3.1 set of rules. But I am not sure
the problem of slowing packs or nearly at a standstill pack would be eliminated
by 4.0. I hope I am wrong, but unless somebody can give an example where slow
trapping portions of packs are illegal, I guess I will still have this opinion.
However, I am open to a different interpretation if somebody wants to make it.

Phil