EASHL 3s - Reverse hitting and interference

I still have yet to play 6s this year so I don't know if it's a penalty there, but reverse hitting needs a tweak. We're back to the situation where it's never a penalty, at least in 3s, which I think is a pretty overpowered ability. Just because you have the puck doesn't mean you have free reign to just randomly stop and body people who are back-checking that aren't doing anything other than skating trying to catch up to the play. If you have a player who is big enough, you can literally just crush everyone on the other team while holding onto the puck, the only semi-counter is a hip-check, and even then it doesn't really do much except stop you from getting bowled over unless you're close to the same size as them. I get that larger players should clearly have a physical advantage over smaller players, and I like that they do this year, but reverse hitting and completely removing someone from the play who isn't even trying to check you seems overkill. You already have the advantage when it comes to normal body checking, and you should have the advantage of being able to protect the puck from the smaller players as well already, there shouldn't be an option to just delete players from playing defense when they aren't even trying to engage you physically.

I was one of the only people that used Reverse Hitting the year that it was introduced, it was strong then, especially since most people didn't even know it existed, I don't remember when, but at some point it was in the same state it is now where it wasn't ever a penalty, then it was either changed back or fixed so that if the opponent wasn't trying to hit you that it would be an interference penalty. As someone who loves reverse hitting, I was perfectly happy with it being a risk/reward/skill based tactic. If you are going up against a team who's entire strategy is truculence, it gave you a way to make them think twice about body checking, but if they adjusted and stopped trying to hit you, you weren't able to just keep reverse hitting them regardless, you'd start taking penalties if they were instead trying to poke you.

I think the best way to handle it would be to have it be an interference penalty unless one of a couple scenarios are active.

• The puck was loose near the boards and you've picked it up within the last half second. This allows for you to essentially brace yourself for contact, and is one of the only times I see reverse hitting in the NHL
  • If the opponent is trying to pin you, that should basically counter/cancel your reverse hit as well in my opinion.
• The opponent is currently winding up for a hit or has attempted a hit within the last half second. (this way if someone tries to push check you and it fails you can reverse hit them in retaliation afterwards if you are quick enough).

It may also make sense to revisit body checking penalties in 3s as well. I think keeping elbowing and charging out of 3s makes sense, but it may be reasonable to bring back either boarding or checking from behind in some fashion. I think boarding should probably still be allowed for now, but checking from behind into the boards specifically maybe could be removed. Force players to use the pin option more. 

I may use a build this weekend that is just built for Reverse Hitting and compile a highlight reel of me destroying innocent players on the other team in the neutral zone to show how absurd it is. And I'm not some 5'10" 160 pound 95 speed ballerina player complaining about this. I'm usually between 90-93 speed and generally try to match size with size. I've abused it at times myself as well. This is coming from someone who has a 92% winning percentage in Club and knows how to play both big and small as a forward. Just from a game-play perspective, Reverse Hitting is not inherently balanced and has no immediate risk to the puck carrier aside from the chance of losing the puck, which is pretty slim if your size advantage is more than a few pounds, and the risk only decreases if you're crazy enough to use Back At Ya as a perk.

If you don't want to make it interference, we need another counter to it, and an alternative solution that I doubt would ever be added in this years game, but could be a solution, is maybe defensive players could be given a "brace for contact" button. This would make it so you won't be able to gain speed while holding the button down, but you won't lose speed like how a poke check makes you lose speed, and holding this button down would make you less susceptible to reverse hitting while doing other actions like poke checking/stick lifting. It would be like a counter to reverse hitting while not being something you can just constantly hold down since you won't be able to accelerate while holding it.

Just my two cents.