Did anyone not link to James Mirtle's post advancing his argument that the NHL should make regular-season overtime longer? He who hesitates is lost.
Gabriel Desjardins of Behind the Net did the research and found that based on the rate of goal scoring in overtime, there would have been only eight shootouts all season if the NHL played 10 minutes instead of five.
Bob McCown makes a similar argument in his new book as well. The crux of the problem with shootouts is they should just be a time- and labour-saving device and not a way to decide who makes the Stanley Cup playoffs. There shouldn't be one every night and we shouldn't have to see teams playing kitty bar the door in the final minutes of a 1-1 or 2-2 game so they can get to overtime and be guaranteed one point.
(That's where McCown's 4-3-2-1 idea -- four points for a regulation win, three for an overtime win, two for a shootout win and one for an extra-time loss -- might have some currency.)
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The crux of the problem with shootouts is they should just be a time- and labour-saving device and not a way to decide who makes the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Well put.
Thanks JM. (But remember, you and Gabe said it first.)
The TV networks probably prefer keeping the shootout, though... they got a block of commericals in ... plus more if the coaches overdo it with the gamesmanship and bring the Zamboni back out. Actually, that's the best reason for longer overtime.
I've been saying that for some time myself - you can easily do 10 minutes without a flood.
But McCown's idea overcomplicates things - who wants to talk about comparing the 12-2-3-4-8 Leafs to the 10-3-5-2-7 Habs?
Well, it wouldn't be too complicated to write the standings -- or so the Germans would have you believe.
You could just group overtime and shootout wins in a single column, same as with OTL and SOL (as the NHL already does).
For instance, in the OHL the Barrie Colts (19-19-2-1) would be listed as 19-19-3 in the OHL... but they've won six games in shootouts...
Under the German/McCown-style system they'd be listed as 13-19-6-3, and you'd do the math when you saw they had 67 points.
You can't trust people to do the math - there's a reason they didn't bunch OTL and T in the old system even though they were worth the same points - it's even less likely that'd work for two categories with different point values.
I've thought about just doing the shootout but giving each team 1 point anyway. Use shootout wins as a tiebreaker if two teams are tied at the end of the regular season.
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