Tournament rules

Tournament rules, Finland Lions Cup U16 April 26-28 2024

The Tournament will be played by the rules of the Finnish Ice Hockey Association with the following adjustments: 

Game time, intermission and timeout
- Round robin: 2 x 20 minutes, max 62min total time
- Bronze & Final: 2 x 20 minutes, max 65min total time
- 1 min intermission
- No timeouts allowed
- If a playoff game ends in a tie, winner will be solved by penalty shots:
   - Playoff games: sudden death (1 shooter at a time)
   - Bronze & Final: 3 shooters per team, if game is still tied after 3 shooters, a sudden death will follow. 
- No warm ups on ice, game starts immediately with starting line ups.

Penalties
Rules of the Finnish Ice Hockey Association with the following adjustments: 
A normal small penalty is 2 minute effective playing time. 
If a player receives a game penalty (5+20 min), he is automatically banned from the next game. 
If a player receives a match penalty (25 min), he is automatically banned from the tournament.

Body checking
Body checking is allowed with the following exception in the “Suomisarja”-division: checking allowed only when going for puck, no open ice hits allowed in “Suomisarja”-division.

Match reports, player lists
Match reports are printed according to the player lists given by the teams. Any changes should be made in the tournament office latest 30 minutes before the team’s FIRST game of the tournament. Player can represent only one team during the tournament. If team has teams on both levels, goalie can play both teams. Goalie can also play play-off games with both teams IF he plays on both level in round robin. One team can use max 20 players + 2 goalkeepers in a single game. 

Protests
All protests are handled by the Tournament Jury. Jury consists of the tournament director and two tournament officials. The decision of the jury is final. The fee for a protest is 200 euros, which will be returned should the protest be accepted. The protest should be in writing, signed by the manager of the team and made no later than 10 minutes after the game has ended.

Referees
Tournament organizers have no control over appointing the referees to the tournament or to a certain game, referees are appointed by the local Referee Association. 

Team Jerseys
Home team plays with dark colored jerseys and the team mentioned later in the schedule (visitor) uses lighter color jerseys.

Right to amendments
Tournament office has the right to amend schedules.

Insurance
All players and team staff must have valid adequate insurance. Tournament is not responsible for any injuries that may occur to players or staff of any team. 

Other disputes
In case of doubt and matters not explicitly expressed in these rules or in the rules of Finnish Ice Hockey Association, the Tournament Jury reserves the right to conduct a decision deviant from rules stated above.

Ranking of teams in groups will be determined by following rules:
1) Points 
2) Goal difference 
3) Goals for 
4) Head-to-head points 
5) Head-to-head goal difference 
6) Head-to-head goals for 
7) Penalty minutes 
8) Dice

When the rule settles the rankings for three or more tied teams only partially (some still tied), the rankings of the remaining teams are continued from the first point of rules (1 Points).