Tonight, the Boston Bruins faced down another potential shootout loss. The shootout hasn’t exactly been kind to the Bruins this year. Thankfully, Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron both beat out Ben Bishop to give the Bruins a 3-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning last night. It was certainly an odd shootout for the Bruins and the Bolts, courtesy of a major misconduct penalty assessed to Steven Stamkos for throwing his broken stick on the bench with just one minute left in overtime.
Puck Prose
The overtime period saw periods of three-on-three play as both the Bruins and the Bolts found members of their squads in the sin bin. The AHL is testing out a new overtime format under Rule 85 this season. This rule gives AHL teams a four-minute four-on-four followed by a three minute three-on-three period. The extended overtime period would reduce the number of games requiring a shootout. (It would also significantly lower the blood pressure of a lot of hockey fans.)
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This AHL format makes a decent amount of sense. Personally, I’d like to see the shootout abolished to the waste dump of history. So would a lot of hockey fans. While the odds of talking Commissioner Bettman out of it remain slim, we can always hope that this game gave NHL fans a taste of what could be happening to hockey in the future.
“I think there are some members of the NHL family who would like to see fewer shootouts,” said NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman on the possibility of getting rid of the shootouts. “We’re not hearing that from fans. Fans like the way the game is. That’s something we’re going to discuss. I’m not sure anybody is ready to make a change.”
I think we can agree to disagree on the shootout rule commissioner. A lot of hockey fans would be on my side of the fence as well here.
Maybe this is something the NHL needs to look at the next time the Board of Governors meet. While it’s rare to see the Commissioner and the Jacobs family not in lock-step with each other over NHL policy, this might be a turning point for hockey. The end of the shootuout. It would certainly be nice to see that every team earns their two points by actually beating their opponent rather than just getting lucky.