NEW HAVEN -- When should the integrity of the game lose out to entertainment value?
We're asking that question now in the American Hockey League. As of the games of Feb. 19, the AHL will play all of its overtimes 4-on-4. A power play would turn the situation into a 4-on-3.
The goal is, basically, goals. The experiment, requested by the NHL, is designed to open up the ice in overtime, resulting in more scoring chances, thus more goals and more overtime decisions.
Of course, this is based on something being wrong with ties, with something being fundamentally flawed in the game as played at the highest professional level.
The NHL hypothesis, being tested in the AHL, is that ties equal disappointment and frustration, while goals and wins and losses equal entertainment.
"The NHL wants to entertain the fans," said Beast of New Haven coach Kevin McCarthy, who professes to be a fan of the system, after his team's first 4-on-4 overtime Feb. 21. "That's what (the game) is becoming, it's becoming entertainment."
And obviously, most of the faster players are intrigued by the wide-open spaces they will now find in overtime.
"I liked it," said second-year Beast Byron Ritchie, one of the team's leading scorers and skill players. "It opened up the ice, and it'll create a little more offense and excitement."
That's indisputable. But the AHL and NHL are drawing no distinction, though, between real entertainment and manufactured entertainment. Watching Joe from Section 12 try to put a puck through a four-inch cutout between periods has entertainment value.
Watching six-year-old Christopher from the birthday party in Section 6 run across the ice stickhandling around cones between periods, trying to beat eight-year-old Evan -- that is definitely entertaining.
Both are tangentially related to hockey, yet no one in their right mind would demand that they be used to break tie games.
How much better is mandated 4-on-4? Four-on-four overtime is really nothing more than the dreaded shootout, gussied up and ready for the prom -- they've changed the worst parts of it, made it a little closer to regulation hockey, but the basic problem with the premise is the same. Instead of cutting it down to five skaters against a goalie, it will be more like 11 or 12 skaters and a goalie after coaches trim their bench to eliminate the slower skaters from overtime participation.
Penalty shots and 4-on-4 action are exciting, to be sure, and they are fun to watch. But part of their charm is their relative rarity. When a 4-on-4 situation arises out of the normal flow of the game, it's beautiful. And it almost never lasts longer than two minutes at a time, unless it's interrupted by at least one power play or one return to full strength.
Sending the teams out for a five-minute stretch of manufactured 4-on-4 has had an effect early; two of the first three games played under the new rules were decided, with the St. John's Maple Leafs winning both (over Saint John and Fredericton), and the Beast and Springfield playing to a 3-3 tie. But the AHL already had fewer games go to overtime than has the NHL this season before the rules change (about 15 percent of games in the American League, compared to about 30 percent in the NHL). And once they got there, one out of every three AHL overtime games reached a resolution.
Part of that is attributable to the simple fact that more goals are scored in the AHL than the NHL (about 6 per game in the AHL to about 5.3 per game in the NHL); the more points on the board, the harder it is for them to be equal at the end, and the more likely someone is to put a puck in the net in any given five-minute stretch. But that could not account for the large disparity.
The AHL will still play with the rule that awards one point to each team at the end of regulation time and awards an additional point to a winner in overtime. Though that rule has its own contrivance level for hockey purists to fight through, at least it does not affect the integrity of the structure of the game. If the NHL feels determined to do something to its game, adopting the AHL's "point for an overtime loss" might be the least destructive.
But if the NHL decides 4-on-4 is the best way, there is a simple solution to the 4- on-4 debacle. In fact, hockey (and New York City subway) writer Stan Fischler has championed it for years.
Want more offense? Want more wins and fewer ties? Play 4-on-4.
All the time.
Every game.
Sixty minutes to start, and another five if you end up tied after 60.
If someone takes a penalty, play 4-on-3. If someone else takes a penalty, play 4-on-2.
It will change the game drastically, it will put players out of work, and it will render 80 years of NHL statistical history irrelevant. But at least when we get to overtime, the game will be the same as it was in regulation.
And damn if it won't be exciting!
--Michael Fornabaio is a staff writer for the Connecticut Post. He covers the
Beast of New Haven and the AHL for the Hockey Insider.