he assigning duties for the "rep" level in my area has been a little messy for a few weeks. It is getting better, but there are still some hiccups here and there. I had one recently when two crews were scheduled for the same game. We caught the problem on the day before, but being the weekend before Christmas, and a long break, no one really wanted to surrender their game slot. One way to fix that was to have more guys occupy the game slot.

Problem solved: We would work the 4-man system.

Long pregame

The 4-man system is not in any book we have. There is probably a reason for that, but we had decided to go that way and were forging (foraging?) on regardless.

We did realize that this change in systems would require a longer than usual pregame conference. This was not entirely different from our first game in the 3- man system, lo these many years ago. But the transition to having another guy on the ice is a tough one and cannot be taken lightly.

Continued...