The NHL announced last week that the All-Star Game, which had essentially become an Ice Capades, with virtually no contact and far too many goals, would be played in a three-on-three format, which has been used for the first time this season in the five-minute overtime period.
Bill Daly, the league’s deputy commissioner, needed no fan polls to know that the use of the three-on-three format during the regular season has provided a thrilling way to break ties while avoiding shootouts, which the former Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur, most notably, called “skills competitions.”
“Certainly, the anecdotal feedback that we’ve gotten has been overwhelmingly positive — off-the-charts positive,” Daly said in an interview this week.
Entering play Friday, 47 of 69 games (68 percent) that were tied after regulation have been decided in the three-on-three overtime period. Last year, the final season of 5-minute, four-on-four overtimes, only 136 of 306 games (45 percent) were decided before a shootout.
Fans like the wide-open overtimes, often decided by a breakdown or a turnover that results in an odd-man rush and a prime scoring chance. Most players seem to like them, too, as long as they are not the ones participating.
Montreal Canadiens forward David Desharnais, who won a Nov. 16 game against Vancouver in overtime, offered somewhat less than a full-throated endorsement of the new format by saying, “I don’t mind it.”
Max Pacioretty, the Canadiens’ captain, said: “Anytime I see a game that’s going to go into overtime, I’ll flip it on TV. I assume the fans feel the same way. It’s entertaining to watch. I think, hopefully, it will boost the All-Star Game and make it more competitive, if they think that’s what they’re going for.”
New York Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, who will almost certainly be included on the 11-player team that will represent the Metropolitan Division in the four-team, single-elimination three-on-three tournament Jan. 31 in Nashville, Tennessee, said he liked the format — for the All-Star Game.
He said of the format in the regular season, “I haven’t really made up my mind yet. I haven’t convinced myself if it’s good. I’m kind of 50-50. There’s a lot of action. The fans enjoy it. I’m still trying to figure out if I like it or not.”
Then he said of the All-Star Game: “My only concern is that the reason that three-on-three is fun now is that players are going really fast. And at All-Star Games, guys are not going as fast. They’re not at 100 percent speed level. We’ll see how the three-on-three situation plays out.”
Rick Nash, the Rangers forward whose overtime goal beat Florida last Saturday, said: “I think it’s fun for the fans. It’s fun to watch. But as far as it coming down to a team missing the playoffs by a point because of three-on-three, it’s a tough one to swallow.”
On the other hand, teams could make the Stanley Cup playoffs because of their three-on-three prowess. The resurgent New Jersey Devils, for example, have won three games in overtime, including back-to-back games in the first month of the season.
“We’re obviously fans,” Devils forward Mike Cammalleri said this week, smiling.
He added: “Maybe because it’s new, but it leads to more good offensive chances. Four-on-four, you can play more positionally because there’s not as much ice out there. With the variables of a shot or a rebound or something, there’s a high probability for an odd-man rush or a scoring chance either way. It makes for exciting hockey.”
Of the 47 games that have been decided in overtime, 28 have been decided in less than 2 minutes, 30 seconds. Ten were decided in the first minute of overtime, including Chicago’s 1-0 victory Oct. 24 over Tampa Bay, in which Jonathan Toews scored at the 17-second mark. (Toews won a game against Anaheim two days later with a goal at 51 seconds of overtime.)
That hardly means, however, that the NHL hierarchy, or players and coaches, want to see every regular-season game tied after regulation decided with a longer three-on-three sudden death. A regular season of 82 games with coast-to-coast travel is enough of a grind.
Devils goaltender Cory Schneider said: “I think it gets tricky. If you don’t score for 10, 15, 20 minutes, it becomes a lot of minutes on those guys. Obviously, the bench has already become shorter with three-on-three. You probably only have eight or nine guys rotating through, and we play enough minutes as it is, especially the top players. We’d all agree that’s not our top priority — to tack on more hard minutes for those guys.”
Strategy for three-on-three play is still undeveloped. John Hynes, the Devils’ coach, was familiar with the format because he coached in the American Hockey League, which used the three-on-three format, but he said it was not something the team worked on much at practice.
The Devils work on three-on-three situations in the end zones — “Just some habits we want guys to have,” Hynes said — and the team watches video of itself and other teams in three-on-three action.
“They have to make the right decisions, but they have to understand that these are the right times to think about it and when to do it — the timing of it. We’ve been able to do that,” he said.
Hynes said of the format: “It’s good for the game. It’s exciting to see it. You can see if things don’t happen for two or three minutes, there could be a minute where there’s all kind of scoring opportunities and chances.”
The NHL faced a different challenge when figuring out what to do about its All-Star Game. With players not showing much interest in making contact, goals had become absurdly easy to score. The third of three games in which two captains chose sides was played in Columbus, Ohio, on Jan. 25 and was won by Toews’ team, 17-12.
Perhaps more important, TV ratings for the game were down 14 percent in the United States and by nearly 40 percent in Canada compared with the previous All-Star Game, in 2012.
Daly said the league office and general managers began talking in earnest about a format change in late March, then tooled with a few concepts, but, he said, “We didn’t get much buy-in from the players’ association.”
The management in Nashville wanted the three-on-three format, though, so the league brought it up with the players’ union again, and an agreement was reached. As Cammalleri said: “I think it’s great. It needed a change. Why not try it? I think it’ll be good.”
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