NHL missing the mark because too many games are decided in a shootout

On Wednesday, three of 10 NHL games ended in a shootout. The Rangers have had three in the last eight games. Too many for my taste.

Not breaking ground here -- some of us have been grumbling since the shootout was adopted in 2005-06 -- but the skills competition in a team sport is a gimmick and inherently silly. It's like deciding a baseball game that is tied after nine innings with a home run derby.

The NHL says most fans like the one-on-ones, but remember, when it comes to deciding playoff tiebreakers at the end of the regular season, the NHL doesn't even consider shootout wins, just regulation plus overtime wins. And has anybody seen a shootout in the playoffs?

It's maddening that a shootout win, worth two points, is valued the same as a regulation or overtime victory.

There are no indications that the shootout is going anywhere, but the NHL should at least reduce the odds of needing one.

Perhaps an answer lies in the AHL, which has been a testing ground for rule changes.

Overtime in the AHL this season has been expanded to seven minutes. Teams play four-on-four until the first whistle after three minutes have been played, then move to a three-on-three format.

You may be surprised at the results. Through the 148 AHL games played through Thursday, 31 games went beyond regulation and only five were decided by a shootout.

Of the 26 decided in the extra seven minutes, 13 of them ended while playing four-on-four and 13 ended during three-on-three.

Center Chris Mueller, 29, who played in the opener for Hartford this season (the Wolf Pack won that game on Oscar Lindberg's three-on-three goal), loves the format. "There's an awful lot of odd-man rushes," Mueller said. "Somebody's going to score."

It does seem that NHL general managers are getting restless. In an effort to produce more goals in overtime, the Zamboni comes out and there's now a dry scrape on the ice after regulation, and the teams switch ends.

Based on a small sample, that's helped a tad. Through Thursday, the first 196 games of the season, 53 have gone beyond regulation and 29 of them weren't resolved in five minutes and went to the shootout, or 54.7 percent. At the end of last season, the number was about 60 percent.

Ideally, the emphasis should be on competition, i.e., winning in regulation or overtime, which is why the 3-2-1 points system has its supporters. Used internationally, it awards three points for a regulation win, two for a win in overtime or shootout and one if a team loses in overtime or the shootout.

That would move the NHL toward solving the nagging issue of the "three-point game," in which teams grab two points for any kind of win and losers walk away with a point for anything but a regulation loss. In other words, reward regulation wins.

To me, in a league that seeks parity and close races in the playoff chase -- and appears to be gaining some traction there -- the format allows teams more opportunity to catch up at the end of a season.

A team five points out of a playoff spot, for example, currently is in a tough spot. A team or teams ahead just need to get to overtime four or five times; the pursuing team needs a string of regulation wins to close the deficit, not an easy hill to climb.

One objection to the 3-2-1 format is that the record books would have to be re-written. Nonsense. They've already been edited with the elimination of the tie and the birth of the shootout. Without re-thinking the current muddle, the NHL has one foot on the platform and the other on the train.