Chicago ? For all of those exasperated fans sitting in NHL arenas who have screamed, “Drop the puck!” your cries have been heard.

In an effort to keep the play moving and reduce the time of games, the NHL has adopted the hurry-up faceoff rule that was a hit at the 2002 Winter Olympics.

From the time the whistle blows to stop play, there will be just 18 seconds until the puck is dropped and play resumes. That’s not a lot of time for fans to take bathroom breaks.

In that time frame, the visiting coach will have five seconds to decide which line he wants on the ice, and the home coach will then have eight seconds to pick his line. The players will then have five seconds to get positioned for the faceoff.

The visiting player still must put his stick down first, followed by the home player. If five seconds has elapsed and a player hasn’t put his stick down, he’ll be tossed from the circle and the team will have five seconds to replace him.

If a player isn’t ready the puck will be dropped anyway. In one of the first exhibition season games of the season, between the St. Louis Blues and Boston Bruins, the linesman dropped the puck without a Bruin near the faceoff dot. The Blues easily won the draw and scored a goal.

“The team that is in there and ready to go will have the advantage,” Blackhawks coach Brian Sutter said. “That’s one way to really embarrass the guys, drop the puck and have nobody there.”

The Blackhawks were so poor on faceoffs last season that any change in the rules couldn’t hurt. The new rule will cut down on all the jockeying for position before the puck is dropped.

The hurry-up line change after whistles also is an attempt to stop the scrums that sometimes occur when a puck is frozen.

The faster changes and faceoffs have cut down on the time of games. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said last season an average NHL game was played in 2 hours 33 minutes. The league hoped to shave about 10 minutes.

They’ve shaved more than that. Preseason games were played in about 2:15 to 2:18. The league expects games to be a little longer once the regular season starts, but not much.

“There has been more skating and less standing around, which is a good thing,” Bettman said.

And players have been allowed to skate without having players clutching, hooking and holding.

Every season the NHL says it is going to clamp down on obstruction and call penalties. Every October and November NHL games become special-teams battles. The players and coaches complain, and eventually the referees start letting things go and games are right back to where they were.

Not this season, says Bettman. Every NHL game is monitored from the league offices in Toronto and NHL supervisor of officials Andy Van Hellemond and NHL director of hockey operations Colin Campbell are determined to enforce the obstruction rules as diligently in April and May as they have in the exhibition season.

That means the Hawkswho Sutter said should benefit because he believes he has such a good skating teamhad better adjust quickly.

In eight preseason games the Hawks were short-handed 65 times, an average of eight a game. They were two men short 14 times. In 82 games last season they were two men short 15 times.

Bettman said a supervisor would monitor each game just to make sure the obstruction calls are being made the way the league wants.