It’s time for the NHL to embrace 10 minutes of overtime

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If the National Hockey League’s offensive renaissance is here to stay, the league should leverage the shift to improve the structure of the regular season. And by improve the structure of the regular season, I mean effectively eliminating the shootout.

The NHL adopted the shootout after the 2004-05 lockout, envisioning the skills competition as a way to conclude deadlocked regular-season games.

In many ways, the shootout made sense. In a collectively bargained league, asking players to play marathon games in the middle of November was not viable, to say nothing of the obvious injury and fatigue concerns. And for a league reticent to accept ties as part of its standings, games needed some degree of resolution.

Setting aside the league’s disinterest in ties (or, for that matter, overhauling the current points system), there has been increasing debate over what to do with the shootout itself. It does end games. But the spirit of the shootout seems such a far cry from what we understand competitive, team-level hockey to be about. And with very compressed standings due to the current scoring system, these skills competitions matter.

We have seen shootout performance decide the fate of teams on the proverbial playoff bubble. It also can have a sizable impact on seeding. Look at this year’s playoff races. The Pittsburgh Penguins are at risk of falling into a dreaded wild-card spot and, instead of playing the 106-point New York Rangers, are staring down the barrel of a 120-point Florida Panthers team. Why? In part, because they have taken just six of a possible 20 points from the shootout (3-7) this year.

To the extent the league really wants to reduce the effect shootouts are having – and I should note here