playing an extra 20 minutes, then calling it a tie sounds better. However, it doesn’t really make it fair for a team that has to play to a tie on night, only to have to play another game the next night. The shootout allows for every game to pretty much be played without one team having a big advantage over the other.

I understand why the NHL has it. I have accepted that it is a part of the game. To me, it renders an unfair advantage to a team that has better individual talents at scoring one-on-one with the goaltender. It ruins that fact that the opposing TEAM played well enough for the previous 65 minutes by awarding an extra point for a gimmick to sell this sport to the casual fan. This sport is and always has been more team oriented than any of the Big 4, and to me, the shootout diminishes the team aspect.

What is wrong with a tie? Obviously, in a perfect world, the teams would play until one scores a goal, but with scheduling (back-to backs) and TV time allotments, this is not possible in the regular season. BUT, the shootout is not good enough for the playoffs? Why? Becuase the purity of the sport and the SC could be ruined by a gimmick!! A huge hypocritical double standard created by the league that takes away from one teams good enough play over 65 minutes to not lose.

Don’t most other professional (and amateur) hockey league use the shootout and have for a good long while? I don’t see why the NHL needs to be any different.

How about keeping the (for the regular season) the 5 min 4 on 4, then going to a 10 min 3 on 3? Sure, it may result in shootout-esque breakaways but it would also be more team oriented for those concerned with the ‘unfair’ advantage of teams with high-level stars in a shoot-out.

Ulf Murphy is right when he says it is more of a team sport than the others, thought football is a real team sport too- if one guy messes up he messes up the entire team.

I love the shootout. I think they’re exciting, they’re a great way to end the game instead of being handed a tie. I don’t think they are a gimmick at all. And if they are, you can’t argue that since the lockout the NHL has really gone out of everyone’s interests, but the shootout is one way to try to get people back to the game, which is what is needed.

As for the players and showcasing who you have and what team doesn’t have anything, eh, why are you a professional athlete if you can’t go one on on one? That’s like saying even in the actual regulation game if you get a breakout and go one on one you’re going to pull off to the side and wait for your mates to come meet you. Plus, I have heard of plenty of games being won in the shootout this year by the guy who no one really expects to score, examples being last night by Nashville, and remember when Kunitz won it for us in the shootout earlier in the season?

And not just because the Red Wings suck at it. I’m hardly a purist, but there have been “innovations” brought into the game that have just completely rubbed me the wrong way, and while the shootout isn’t quite as bad as the glowing puck, it’s in the ballpark.

Before you jump all over that statement, I’d like to offer up the thought that for casual fans, the glowing puck was a popular innovation, something that let them follow where the puck was, where the action was going, where otherwise, they’d be looking in one corner as the puck went a different direction.

The shootout strikes me the same way, a nice shiny distraction for casual fans, letting them get a satisfying conclusion to what is otherwise often an evenly matched contest that should be left as a tie.

Unlike AppleSweetRose, I also hate penalty kicks as a way to settle soccer games, but at least in that sport, even at the highest level, they totally committed to the idea, using it even to settle the highest level of competition, the World Cup. And twice in the last 16 years, the biggest trophy in the world was handed out by fiat of a skills competition. Yeah, it’s memorable, 16 years later, and I still vividly remember Roberto Baggio blowing a kick over the crossbar en route to an Italian loss in the 1994 final.

And in Olympic hockey play, as I wrote about a couple of days ago, I remember, vividly, two of the shootout attempts in the 1994 final, including Forsberg’s work out art.

It’s memorable, yeah, but it’s a crappy way of ending a championship level event, and I fear that if the shootout sticks around and becomes an accepted part of the NHL landscape, eventually someone will propose it to decide things in the playoffs, and it may just stick.

It goes without saying that there’s something special about the sudden death overtime goal, especially in the playoffs. I’ve watched a number of 3 OT games in the Stanley Cup Finals (5 of ‘em if I remember them all, Oilers-Bruins in 1990, Uwe Krupp for the Avs in 1996, Brett Hull in 1999, Larionov scoring for the Wings in 2002, and of course, some contest you guys might recall from a couple of years ago). There’s nothing like OT in the playoffs…and I see the shootout as a long term threat to that most awesome spectacle.

I love the shootout. I don’t have a long argument why but I love it.

As a side note. There was a time when the forward pass, in football, was considered a “gimmick” and a “fad”.

Like it or love it, hail to the Shootout Master….Sid the Kid! He had to go up twice, but the second time was oh so nice!