It was the valedictorian of NHL rule changes when agreed upon last summer, the one that everyone figured as the most likely to succeed. And, yes, the three-on-three overtime period has been a crowd-pleasing winner.
The intention was to cut down on the number of ties broken by a shoot-out, which is a roundly disappointing way of ending a hockey game.
What people did like was the four-on-four, five-minute overtime period, but it was not ending enough games.
Last year only 44 per cent of games that were tied after regulation finished with a sudden-death goal.
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Henrik Lundqvist saving the New York Rangers one shot at a time
What to do? Take one more man off the ice. In the first quarter of this season, with the dawning of the three-on-three madhouse, 69 per cent of games have been decided in the five-minute overtime.
The action is wide open and end-to-end. It is a festival of breakaways, great saves and odd-man rushes.
“It’s chaos out there,” Philadelphia Flyers goalie Steve Mason told CSNPhilly.com. It is possible that some killjoy strategists will figure out a way to drag the three-on-three into a boring, five-minute slow dance. For now, though, usually, as soon as one mistake is made, an advantage turns into a rush, followed by another and another.
Three-on-three may still annoy some purists, but if tie games are not an option anymore, and three-on-three makes the shoot-out an exception not the rule, let’s skate with it.
In fact, why not skate 10 minutes with it?
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