from Fluto Shinzawa of the Boston Globe,

Neil Abbott gets a good laugh when a coach calls his timeout down by one goal with little time left. The coach huddles his players and scribbles madly on his whiteboard to diagram what he believes will be the game-tying play.

“Then they lose the draw and it’s up in smoke,” said the longtime Boston agent. “So why don’t they do something different?”

Abbott has a proposal for late-game situations. For example, Team A is trailing Team B by a 2-1 score with two minutes remaining in regulation. Team A’s coach would call his timeout. After the timeout, Team A would gain automatic possession of the puck inside the circle at the red line in front of the penalty boxes.

There would be no faceoff. Team A would start with the puck. Team A’s coach could spend the entire timeout mapping out an offensive play instead of reminding his players what to do if they lost the faceoff.

continued plus a diagram of the suggested change...