from Jonathan Willis of Sportsnet,

... But while 3-on-3 overtime will help, it’s not a solution in and of itself because there’s still massive incentive for teams to go to overtime. The NHL system is structured so that there are two points available to be handed out to the teams involved in a game decided in regulation; there are three available in overtime/shootout games. So when the game is tied with 10 minutes left in the third period, both teams have an incentive to play low-event, defensive hockey the rest of the way to ensure that they at least collect a point. In a league that is constantly combating a tendency toward low-scoring games, the very structure of the scoring system encourages them.

Holland pointed to the Swedish Hockey League as an example of the merits of three-on-three overtime, telling NHL.com that the league went from roughly 38 percent of its games being decided in overtime rather than the shootout to something in the 75-80 percent range. What he didn’t point out was that the SHL operates under a very different point system than the NHL does—three points awarded for a regulation win, two for an overtime/shootout win, one for an overtime/shootout loss and none for a regulation loss. The same number of points is available in every game; no extra point magically appears for managing to make it to overtime.

A team that plays defensive hockey still guarantees itself a point, but in so doing it also guarantees the sacrifice of a point to its opponent. The incentive is to do everything at all points to win. The Swedes instituted the three-point system in the late 1990s and saw an immediate five percent bump in scoring. The NHL of the same era watched scoring fall for half a decade before the rule changes and power plays of 2005-06 briefly reversed the low-scoring trend.

None of this is to say that 3-on-3 overtime is a bad idea. On the contrary, making overtime more decisive is one way to lessen the corrupting impact of the shootout on the NHL standings. It simply isn’t enough; the NHL also needs to remove the obvious incentive that every team in the NHL has to force games to overtime. A 3-on-3 overtime in concert with a three-point system is a much better idea than the former on its own.

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