There seems to be some misconception around the “object” of a hockey game. The object of a hockey game is not to demonstrate that you are the better team. The object of a hockey game is to win the game, by whatever definition of “win” is applicable. The better team frequently loses hockey games.

The same applies to tournaments. The object of the tournament isn’t to demonstrate who is the best team. The object of the tournament is to emerge from the final game as the victor.

You could turn a deadlocked finals match into an infinite sudden-death game like the NHL playoffs, but that does no better of a job ensuring that the better team wins. If it did, you wouldn’t hear coaches preaching the overtime strategy of “just shoot every puck during overtime because we could get a bounce.”

The ideal solution would be to just call the game a tie and have the teams play another game, but that is impractical for lots of reasons.

The shootout is just fine as a mechanism for determining the winner of the game.

Posted by Mojo Tooth on 01/04/09 at 04:40 PM ET

A shootout is a poor way to decide a game.  You have taken a team game and decided it with an individualized skills competition.  It would make as much sense to decide the game with a fastest skater competition.

Now there is an issue in a tournament that a winner is needed in the game and with further games scheduled there cannot be a lengthy sudden death playoff.  An individualized skills competition gets that winner, but it is an unsatisfactory way to do it.  In an ideal world a hockey game is won by a team playing hockey and not an individual in a phony breakaway competition.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 01/04/09 at 08:09 PM ET

Clarification: I’m talking about tournaments, or some other situation where ties are impossible to tolerate. I’m of the opinion that regular-season ties should be just fine.

Okay, then we have to decide a winner by playing hockey. If by “playing hockey” you mean infinite overtimes, I completely disagree for reasons that I’ve already stated. It’s not the best team who wins an overtime game. Frequently it’s the luckiest.

The problem is that in hockey, compared to most other team sports, it is difficult to score. Sometimes a whole regulation game will go by with nobody managing to accomplish it. So, if you cannot tolerate ties, some mechanism that guarantees a victor will be produced in some finite amount of time is preferable.

So if not a shootout, what then? Three on three hockey? That’s not “hockey” either. Why not just put on the inline skates and have everybody play roller hockey? Or maybe just a winner-take-all broomball game.

The shootout is just fine, from a practical and mechanical perspective. That’s not even considering that the typical fan enjoys the shootout very much.

I predict that NHL playoff hockey will eventually go the shootout route. Some small pocket of “purists” will have conniption fits, many people will breathe a sigh of relief, including television executives who deal with the NHL and everyone within the NHL that is trying to sell the game to media.

As for myself, I’m tired of triple-OT hockey whose boring play is only matched in hideousness by its almost always anti-climactic finish.

Posted by Mojo Tooth on 01/04/09 at 11:21 PM ET