Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
WRONG. The OTL was first introduced as an incentive to help eliminate ties in the first place because there were a lot of overtime games, and most of them were boring trapfests that never solved anything. The last year in the old system there were 162 games that ended in a tie in a 27-team league; 14.6% of all the games played. The following year after the OTL was introduced, there were only 146; 13% of all games played, but more importantly, the changes made a perceptible impact to the quality of the game by providing an incentive to actually win as opposed to just avoiding a loss. Last year, there were 178 games that went to the shootout; 14.5% of all games played. Again, drawing from my memory of OT games played in the 90s, these were still much more enjoyable games to watch because teams don't just play not to lose.
In the first place, I can't imagine why you would think fewer games would end up going to OT if the old system were reimplemented. What would have changed to affect this? In the second place, I think that you greatly underestimate the impact that the OTL has on what actually happens in OT. Under the old system there was always a greater incentive for a team to ensure that they didn't lose in OT, and consequently both teams always tended to play for the tie. When the system changed, it opened things up and made for a better quality product on the ice. If they returned to the old system, then teams would again just play for 5 mins of survival in OT by keeping the puck out of their own end, and hoping for a breakdown from the other team.
Like it or not, the OTL DOES serve a useful purpose in helping to make each game in itself more enjoyable. While I agree that it contributes to a false sense of parity, and the current system is flawed, the solution IS NOT to do away altogether with the OTL. At this stage, it seems to me that the most practical thing to do is to adopt a 3-point system: 3 for an RW, 2 for an OT/SOW, 1 for an OT/SOL. Also, I would prefer adopting a 4v4 and 3v3 format for OT.
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You're right that there was 146 games that ended in a tie after the OTL was implemented. There was still, however, another 114 games that went to OT that were decided in overtime. The Bruins in 1999-2000 went to overtime a third of their games.
And this was during expansion when the league's parity was terrible. In 2003 over 25% of all games went to overtime and that's about where we are now.
What the OTL did was increase the games that were decided in the 5 minutes of overtime, this there is no doubt. It also increased the the times that teams saw overtime after playing to a tie for 60 minutes as they were guaranteed a point and still could claim 2.