This is the week the National Hockey League throws away one page of its rulebook: the one about overtime. When the final horn sounds on the final game Thursday in Los Angeles, out goes limited overtime and in comes unlimited overtime.
There’s a generation — maybe two — of players and fans who don’t remember that the NHL used to have overtime ONLY in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Regular-season games were 60 minutes, period. The score when that final horn sounded was the final score. Each team earned one point.
Overtime arrived in 1983, merely 32 years ago. The NHL wisely took a cue from its then-defunct rival, the World Hockey Association, and introduced sudden-death (or sudden-victory) overtime, for five minutes. If nobody scored, it was a tie. After 16 years of research, the NHL discovered this somewhat reduced the number of tie games, so it ordered teams to keep one player on the bench in overtime. It also gave the beaten team a point for losing.
After another 16 years of research, the result was deemed to be unsatisfactory, even after adopting shootouts to break ties. This time, the NHL changed overtime by allowing only three skaters and a goalie to play, opening up the ice… and the scoring. This 3-on-3 format was resoundingly popular and exciting, and the number of shootouts dropped by about 70 per year.
That’s your overtime history lesson.
The reality is that 3-on-3 overtime has become too predictable, at times even boring. It’s a possession game, with teams taking the puck all over the ice to keep it. Plus, shootouts are still, well, shootouts, as unacceptable as always.
Recently, I read an article that NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said he was against extending overtime from five minutes to 10 because of the ice conditions and the “wear and tear” on the players who would have to be rotated for an extra five minutes. The average hockey fan might consider Bettman’s stance and say “poor dears” about players who make multi-millions of dollars for playing the game they love.
Yet with the playoffs about to start, what’s not good for ice conditions and weary players on Thursday (regular season) this week is perfectly fine on Saturday (playoffs).
I have an idea, from my armchair facing the TV.
Everybody loves playoff overtimes, no matter how long they last, because it’s desperation 5-on-5 hockey. Scrap the shootout. Scrap the limit on how long overtime lasts. While my ideal would be treating every regular-season game exactly like a playoff game, retaining 3-on-3 would be a compromise, enhancing opportunities for quick goals to send everybody but the losing team home happy.
However, it also requires a rule change for 3-on-3. If a team takes the puck out of the offensive zone — back over the red line — let the officials whistle the play dead and move the face-off to the defensive zone, just like they do for icing.
Twenty years ago, the significance of the red line disappeared when previously illegal two-line passes were allowed. Give “centre ice” another reason to exist, besides its role for icing.
The NHL has never been reluctant to make changes, mostly good ones. Sometimes, it just takes 16 years of research.
