Sorry for not responding sooner, I’ve had time to read but not write the last couple days. I like the conversation on the topic so far though.

Basically I’m not all that sold on the to many bodies on the bottom issue. The only place I see a problem is in front of the goal tray and even if you made the game 4 on 4 +3m depth, with no subs you will still get a mess of bodies and it will be hard to see the puck in front of the goal. Might just be my opinion but I think I’m correct there. If the puck is near the goal lots of bodies are going to be around it, period.

Some of the issues with subbing in general is when the puck is near the sub area it is chaos anyway, and even with end wall deck subbing this was the case, subbing violations happened but there were so many people coming and going and splashing and the refs are moving around it was impossible to see. Same thing now with the in water side subbing, when the puck is close by there are so many bodies and heads bobbing up and down even players accidentally surfacing in the wrong sub box it is near impossible to tell. I agree that with what I proposed it would not make the situation better when the puck is near the box, but it couldn’t make it much worse.
But damn sure if when the puck is at the far end of the pool and someone has swum all the way back and two players accidentally go under, even if only one enters the play it was seen and gets called. Same as with a fin tips in the water call with deck subbing.
With what I was suggesting there were a few things that made me think about it. It makes the sub box it self a little less crowded with players coming and going, if multiple players sub at once. That’s not a big deal but just a point.
5m radius is ridiculous, way too far it was just a number I threw out. 1 meter is probably much more realistic. But I would still want to extend the distance some when the play has stopped for an advantage puck.
Big things happen and the puck moves when a fresh player enters the game. It happens all the time, a player subs in and is the perfect outlet to get a stalled puck to zip across the pool opening the game up, making a big offensive push or a heroic defensive stop. This just allows that person to get in the play a touch quicker. Whether that is a good thing or not I guess is personal opinion. I can respect thinking that it is a very tactical point looking for those openings when the opponents are subbing.

The big one though is when the puck is stalled in the defensive end. When it is on the sub box side, the defensive team is able to put in huge efforts and stall the puck or support their players and sub very quickly and often without opening up a path to the goal. On the far side however, subbing can lead to an immediate score, even in a narrow pool the little bit of distance from the play to the sub box seems to make a difference. Again maybe that is just a personal thing and as part of the game is a tactical point I just thought it could be balanced.

I dunno, it was just a thought I had since we play this way at club level a lot and it seems to work ok; not because we want to thumb our nose at the rules but just out of laziness really. It was getting a bit out of hand with people jumping in to stop beak-aways, but that was squished with a simple spoken rule hey they have to at least be close before you sub in. I thought it would be ok for subbing in UWhockey as well. Ice hockey being the only other sport that allows on the fly subbing I considered it as an example. Maybe we should switch the subbing for this game to more like basketball or soccer, only on stoppages and the coach has to request it from the ref? Seems like a decent compromise between No subbing and on the fly subbing.

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