The Hockey News Creates Stupid Ideas

My beloved sport isn't popular. That's why we've been best friends all these years... *single tear hits keyboard* The sport has become more exciting ever since they went and canceled a season on all of us. Perhaps too exciting. So says Sam McCaig, senior copy editor of The Hockey News. Why they let these people blog is beyond me.

A couple of days ago, a fellow THN editor asked me if I was still “down on the shootout.”

I promptly replied, “Yes.”

Sounds like somebody has a case of the Mondays.

However, back when the tie-breaking format was introduced in 2005, I probably would’ve yelled, “Hell, yes!” and immediately launched into a double-decibel rant about the NHL selling out the game and the shootout’s complete lack of credibility.

Complete lack of credibility? It's a game, asshole. How do you measure hockey's credibility? Man, I wish that I would have read that article.

“It’s a skills competition they ripped off from the All-Star Game!” I would’ve cried. “Nothing more than a novelty act!”

And I would have yelled back, "Hey, dipshit, the 1994 gold medal in the winter olympics was decided by a shootout! Shut the fuck up so I can eat my sammich!" And a novelty act? A novelty act would be the teams trotting out a three member circus freak panel to fight each other. A winner would be determined by blood loss.

"Hockey is a team game!” I surely would’ve shouted. “Let the teams decide who wins and loses, not an individual player on a propped-up breakaway!”

Because those teams played to a tie. So lets bore the fans who don't care about the sport anyways by having them play even more.

Not being smart enough at the time, I wouldn’t have even thought to bring up the fact that four-column records (win–loss–overtime loss–shootout loss) are a royal pain in the standings. Or that the “loser point” would forever relegate a trusty stat like winning percentage to the trash pile. (Now teams have a “points percentage,” which is like winning percentage…but completely irrelevant.

Hey, that's a great point. Unless you could reclaim that room by just adding the shootout loss into the overtime loss column. It's the same outcome, with the team getting one point in the standings. Or you could just be a shithead about it. We've seen where Sammy decided to go with that. And on the same note - way to waste space by separating your idea inside the parenthesis into two paragraphs. What a shithead.

A team could lose all 82 games in a shootout for a record of 0-0-82…And hey! Look! They’re .500! What a year! Stanley Cup, here we come! What do you mean there’s no shootout in the playoffs! Just wait…)

Caution! Sam's slope is very slippery. Or a team could lose 82 games in overtime, before the game is decided in a shootout, and still be 0-0-82. Oh, what's that? You're using three columns? Yeah, get fucked, Sam.

The truth is, though, I’ve mellowed on the shootout a bit.

A bit.

I have only gotten angrier in the last fifteen minutes. Sam has had three years to cool his jets.

I still feel the same way I did when it was thrust upon the league three years ago – that a player-versus-player competition is an awful way to decide a team game – but my passion has subsided with the passage of time.

So what about penalty shots during the game? That's part of the tradition that you're so fond of. Are you going to decry that? And let's also set about in eliminating the ability for a single player to get a breakaway during the game and facing the goalie by himself. Those are unfair because the whole team has fucked up and let a forward get behind the defense. While we're at it, lose the goalie. Why should one individual be allowed to only stop shots in this team sport?

I can even grudgingly concede – as long as you don’t throw it back in my face – that fans, for the most part, seem to like the shootout. If you’ve ever been in attendance for an NHL game that required one, you know the in-arena intensity shoots through the roof. And, definitely, entertaining the fans and giving season-ticket holders the feeling they got their money’s worth is important.

And it brings in fans that normally wouldn't watch a game. I could yell "Shootout!" in college and roommates would come in and watch, then go back to not caring about the NHL. It's good for the league and good for the sport. A larger fan base would bring more into the sport, and then the talent grows and the game gets better.

However.

What however? However, the game needs to be boring because the way it was is much better! The game should die a slow and miserable death at the hands of Sam McCaig! The streets shall run black and red with newsprint and blood! More fans = better for the sport. Shootouts make the game more exciting, so how is there a however?

Nothing is more important than maintaining the integrity of the game. And while the introduction of the shootout did not sink the league’s credibility, it was a shot across the bow. Think about it. The next logical step is to introduce the shootout to decide playoff games; say, for games that remain tied after one 20-minute overtime period.

Are you fucking kidding me? The overtime period(s) in the playoffs are still played 5-on-5. So the next logical step would be to go to 4-on-4 like they do in the regular season. A shootout is very far from the next logical step unless you're a blithering moron. And as for Credibility and integrity? You could have gone with TV and greed forcing the shootout to create artificial excitement and make games end on time so that FSN Final Score doesn't get bumped. Notice the lack of evidence to show that the league has lost credibility and integrity, which can't be measured. What can be measured, of course, is attendance and league revenue. Those have gone up since the lockout, and the excitement of a shootout could be a cause of it, along with redistribution of talent with a salary cap and revenue sharing. But the game lost integrity, scruples, and street cred. No hustle either, Skip.

Surely, we can all agree that would be a terrible day for the league. NHL playoff overtime is the best thing about hockey – you could argue nothing is more exciting in the world of pro sports – and the last thing the league should do is tamper with its most thrilling aspect.

Overtime playoff hockey was pretty cool when I could stay up and watch the games. A couple overtimes are still fun to watch. In Dallas, they stand through the whole thing, which is a pretty cool tradition for such a mindless fan base. There are a lot of things that are more exciting in every sport than playoff overtimes. Baseball has bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, football has last second desperation, and basketball has the last 45 seconds that turn into an hour with timeouts when the score is close. Fuck, even bowling has the 10th frame. Breakaways are the most thrilling aspect of the game. So stop bitching about the way it used to be. Didn't you see they changed the logo, Sam? It slants upward.

In fact, I think the league should go the other way and extend overtime during the regular season. Forget the shootout; how about 4-on-4 OT for 10 minutes instead of five? Or 20 minutes? Or play until someone scores; that’s what sudden-death overtime is all about.

And the arenas could play Brahms' Lullaby.

The naysayers might complain about games going too long – granted, no one wants to stay up until two in the morning on a Tuesday night in February to see who wins the fifth St. Louis-Nashville meeting – but the fact is, more than 40 percent of regular season games that go to overtime are decided within the five-minute frame. Plus, if teams know they don’t have the option to try and “hold on” for a shootout, they’ll be more apt to go for the win in OT.

Right now, 100% of the games end within a reasonable amount of time. Andrew touched on fairness in OT in football and now here it is in hockey. Shootouts are a fair way to end a game. In a long OT game, a bad penalty can be called and ruin the outcome of the game, fucking up Sam's precious integrity.

And if it’s really a big concern that far too many games would go on for far too long, why not go to 3-on-3 after 10 minutes of 4-on-4? There won’t be any triple-overtime marathons under that format, we can guarantee you. Granted, 3-on-3 is a little cartoony, but it’s much better than deciding games with a 1-on-1 format.

Actually, 3-on-3 hockey has been done before. And it was the greatest video game. Ever. But in the NHL overtime, I don't think that all of the sudden somebody will yell "BO-NUS!" and you'll get an unstoppable slap shot. Well, not yet.

Pretty much anything is.

How about games are decided by the drawing and quartering of senior copy writers from The Hockey News? Teams win by having the majority of the corpse. I don't want that to actually happen, but is that better? Pretty much anything is.