With the running clock, it was actually a great strategy to Ice the puck. Strategically, if I'm a coach I'm telling my players to Ice the puck anyways, especially at lower levels. If there's a chance for a counter attack, then take it, but Icing is giving up possession anyways.
Overall the rule is detrimental to development, because kids will no longer be learning how to advance the puck up the ice on a PP, nor will PK'ers be learning systems to prevent this. It's going to be constant resetting for face-offs, and given the dubious skating skills of many of our youth hockey refs, what used to be an exciting part of the game is now going to slow to a crawl.
The only benefit I see is for teams that develop kids with better than average face-off skills, and set plays that manage to get possession and keep it. I don't think we needed automatic icing to provide incentive for defenders to battle for puck possession. It seems that if there is a gimmick or weird rule change to experiment with, we apparently have to be first in line for it.