from Ken Campbell of The Hockey News,
The next time Detroit Red Wings GM Ken Holland shows up at the GM meetings trying to convince his colleagues to change the rules governing overtime and shootouts and go to 3-on-3 hockey in extra time, he’ll have some real data to bolster his argument. And that data will tell him and everyone in the hockey world that the only way to lessen the impact of shootouts is to go to 3-on-3.
It will also tell them that the customary and cautious half measures the NHL took to do a quick shovel scrape of the ice and change ends to force the long change have done almost nothing to decide games in overtime.The much-maligned shootout still reigns supreme and it continues to be a goaltending competition instead of a scoring one. There’s no indication the NHL will ever do away with it entirely, but it seems intent on minimizing its impact as much as possible. The first measure was to make regulation and overtime wins the deciding factor in a tiebreaker, the second was to go to the long change in overtime to try to create more 4-on-4 offense and have fewer shootouts.
Both measures have failed. Miserably.
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