[FanIn80]

Shootouts aren't going anywhere, so it's time to stop thinking of them as novelty acts and start thinking of them in terms of a necessary evil you need to be good at in order to (potentially) win a game. If you're a strong 3/3 OT team or a strong S/O team, then to me that's no different nowadays to being a good PP or PK team. It's just another aspect of the game that you have to be good at to make the playoffs. Rewarding teams for not being good at those things is not spurring them to be better at them. It's just allowing them to continue not giving a **** about them.

How much more exciting would a S/O be if the only thing that matters now was if you WON it? I'd imagine teams would actually start practicing 3/3OT or S/Os. Maybe it adds shootout skills to a goalie's chart when you're drafting them. Maybe teams that have clear-cut #1 goalies start looking for backups that really good in shootouts...

I guess what I'm getting at is that overtimes and shootouts have been here for a while now, and they aren't going anywhere, so now it's time to take the training wheels off. Being good at 3-on-3 or shootouts should be another advantage that teams strive for to help them WIN games, just like being good on the PP does. The only thing that should ever matter at the sound of the final horn is if you WON the game, and that's a much closer representation of playoff hockey than the current system is.