I've given the NHL's new overtime system the benefit of the doubt.
And damn, it's exciting when it happens.
But you know what? Four-on-four overtime still isn't right.
It's not right to finish a game under different rules than we started with.
It's not right to turn the most important five minutes of the night into an exhibition.
Giving an overtime loser a point in the standings still isn't right.
It's not right that one set of teams can split two games and get two points apiece, while another set of teams can split two games and get three points apiece.
It's not right to turn the NHL into a kindergarten.
If you get something when you win, you get something when you tie and you get something when you lose, well, are we a professional league, or are we a touchy-feely new-age romper room?
It's tough to tell in today's NHL.
The NHL is touting their statistics, that more games are being decided in overtime than at any time in the last three years. Well, duh. It's 4-on-4 hockey. You've pulled a player off and opened up the ice and made offense not only possible but downright guaranteed. If teams played overtime 3-on-3, betcha even more games would come to a conclusion. Heck, let's try that Sega practice mode -- 2-on-2 without goalies. Every game would reach a conclusion!
I shouldn't say that too loud, because I might give someone at the league office an idea.
Look, 4-on-4 hockey is exciting. It always has been. Anyone who's watched more than a couple of hockey games has seen it occur naturally in the flow of a game and knows it's exciting. It produces more goals. It's fun to watch.
But if the only way you can make your product exciting is to fundamentally change it at the most important point in the game, what does that say about your product? Why do we spend a day's paycheck to watch your product if you don't want its rules upheld at the key juncture of the night?
Simple answer: this game is way too far into our blood to get it out now, though the Bettman Dialysis Machine is working overtime.
The standings issue is less detrimental, but still not pretty.
Some people, including Flyers coach Roger Neilson (and in case we haven't said it loudly enough, fight hard, baby, we're with you), have argued that the standings are confusing, that four columns make it difficult to do the necessary calculations to figure out who's where and who can do what, that it's impossible to tell what .500 is anymore. It's the truth.
But the sadder truth is there is no .500 anymore. You can be under .500 and have more points than games played; you can apparently be at .500 but have more points than a .500 team with the same number of games played.
It's all because of that fourth column, although it would be a lot easier to get used to that fourth column if they called it what it is -- "Overtime losses" -- instead of kindergarten-coating it as "Regulation ties."
The traditionalist's way to deal with this, regardless of how the NHL chooses to present it in the agate, is probably to say we've gone neatly back in time to the way it used to be until 1983 -- there is no overtime anymore, not for real, anyway. At the end of 60 minutes, you either win, lose or tie.
And then, if you've tied, you get to play the fourth-column bonus-point round!
Gary, tell 'em what they get to do next!
"NHL team, you and your opponent get to play five minutes of a nifty exhibition sport -- it's almost... well, it's pretty much hockey, but it's not exactly the kind you just finished playing -- and if one of you gets a goal, THAT TEAM GETS A BONUS POINT IN THE STANDINGS!!!"
What the hell have we done to our sport? Because overreaction or not, that's exactly what it is. We might as well bring the pee-wee teams from the first intermission back out to play for the extra point.
Isn't there a better way? If you really, honestly feel the game as it is now cannot stand, has to change for the betterment of the fans and the players and the free world, isn't there something else we can do that doesn't tear the fabric of the sport apart?
Pick one or two of the following: Move the nets out another couple of feet and shorten up the neutral zone. Eliminate the red line for the purposes of offsides passes. Add 10 feet on each side of the ice and make the international 200-foot-by-100-foot standard into the NHL standard. Force players to serve their full two-minute minor for all fouls, regardless of how many goals the other team scores on their power play. Call shorthanded icings if the player hasn't crossed his own blueline before firing the puck all the way down. For God's sake, keep calling obstruction; if they can hide it well enough, let 'em trap, but the obvious stuff has to go.
Stop expanding the league, if you can get your heads out of your wallets long enough. Eastern Europe contributed mightily to the talent pool through the first expansion of the '90s, but frankly, we reached the saturation point somewhere around Anaheim.
Stop blaming goalies and their equipment -- they're good, for crying out loud; they've had a hundred years to figure you guys out, and they aren't that dumb that they can't learn a thing or two.
Find ways to practice more and encourage offensive creativity at the youth level instead of teaching young kids how to trap and obstruct. They'll learn that soon enough.
Just stop corrupting the integrity of the game and the standings.
With a little hyperbole and a lot of satire last February, I wrote a column ("Four-on-SCORE!") for an online hockey magazine about the AHL's 4-on-4 experiment in which I dejectedly cast my lot with Stan Fischler: if we had to play overtime at 4-on-4, play regulation at 4-on-4, too.
I'm not sure I really believed it then, and I believe it less now. It's drastic. It's awfully drastic. And it might be inevitable, eventually, as the game speeds up and players get so much bigger.
So here's another idea: who the heck needs overtime, anyway? We survived 41 years without it; we can do it again. Just call it a noble idea that has served its purpose...
Oh, right. America needs a winner. You tie, you've committed incest or something like that.
Presumably, the same person came up with that one that came up with "Ranger fans won't put up with a rebuilding effort."
Play 60 minutes, and if you're tied, you're tied.
Either way, it's preferable to the hideous mishmash we have now.
What we have now isn't right. If we win when we win, we win when we tie and we win when we lose, what exactly have we won?
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Michael Fornabaio--mef17@oocities.com