The biggest issue with hockey in North America is the the officiating is so discretionary. Icing is actually a very simple rule, but it's not always called by the book and that makes hockey rules difficult to understand. I can imagine this is frustrating to a new fan.

I'm fortunate that I'm able to take my kids to a few hockey games a year. I find it helps to sit higher up so that they can see the whole game and that helps them see how plays develop and how positioning works better than sitting at ice level. Even they can see that rules are basically ignored at times and arbitrary calls are made to even out the game. When I look at how the rules in rugby are handled it's just better in my opinion. I'm ok with refs missing calls sometimes, cause the game is fast and that's going to happen, but the game management and trying to balance penalties and keep the game close kind of makes me lose interest cause the game ends up depending on luck a lot of the time. That's my rant for the night. I'm going to bed.