The BMC Vault: Bob Verdi's love letter to playoff hockey and smackdown of the NHL's contrived regular season tiebreakers

Welcome to The BMC Vault, yet another tag recently created that will hopefully provide future excuses to post. Since so many online publications decide to be dicks and not leave some of their really great older stuff available for the sake of our posterity, I'm trying to lend a helping hand in the name of humanity. Requests for future installments can be sent here.

Last night was the first multiple overtime game of this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs, and as Puck Daddy noted today, we haven't seen as many of those as we had in years past. We've still had nine OT games in these playoffs—and it's only the first round

Of course, to the casual fan, maybe this multiple-overtime thing doesn't sound like such a big deal. But for anybody who just endured the 82-game regular season, there aren't enough words of gratitude for the fact that we're now going to have ties settled the right way. (OK, occasional exception aside.)

I knew the NHL was going to have to change after the lockout. But even I couldn't have imagined how much I would loathe the shootout, presumably because I had no idea that the Blackhawks were going to be anywhere near as awesome as they are now and that I would watch not just most of their games, but gobble up whatever other NHL action I could see. 

The fact the NHL continues to use this joke of a format to actually determine its regular season winners is somewhat stunning, but I imagine that the fact that this year a shootout actually determined the winner of a game many had been calling the first playoff game may finally bring more attention to the backlash. (NOTE: They are planning to fuck with it, which doesn't excite me near as much as if they scrapped it altogether.)

I originally planned on running this on its two-year anniversary of original publication next month, but now seems to be the appropriate time to recall a flat-out terrific column from Chicago Blackhawks Team Historian Bob Verdi, written back when he was still with the Trib. I'm obviously something of a fan of the guy, and this piece of his from just a few years ago still better sums up the state of the game since the lockout—and why the playoffs make me deliriously happy for months as a fan:

Playoff hockey the real deal

Chicago Tribune

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Author: Bob Verdi

What you are watching now, or should be if you aren't, is real hockey. 


The San Jose Sharks and their fans still reel about what occurred in the wee hours Monday morning in Dallas, where the hometown Stars scored in the fourth overtime period to advance to the Stanley Cup semifinals. 


But years from now, those same Sharks will tell their grandchildren about a slice of NHL history, the eighth-longest game ever to that point, a visceral and exceptional montage of skills that concluded at 1:21 a.m., or 129 minutes and three seconds after Game 6 of their series commenced. 


The final score of 2-1 will be engraved in the minds of the Sharks, but so will the exhilaration of having participated. You see, nothing beats playoff hockey, and not just because the great Don Cherry shall be dropping in from Canada for a cameo appearance. 


For reasons that remain vague three years later, the NHL returned in 2005 from its nuclear winter with a "new and improved" game that would make fans forget the lockout. 


There would be no more ties, declared Commissioner Gary Bettman, thus reinventing a sport that imported him from basketball. In case of a deadlocked score after 60 minutes, teams would try to unlock it by playing five extra minutes with four skaters per side instead of five. 


Should that gimmick not yield a result, teams then would embark on a shootout, a solution no less absurd than deciding a tie baseball game with a home run derby or a tie basketball game with a free throw shooting contest. 


Exactly why the NHL enacted such drastic revisions in its style and rule book is a mystery, especially when official league spinsters insist changes were enacted to effect a more tailored, structured entertainment package. For what? Television? What television? 


Piling mistakes upon errors, the NHL also opted to award each team a point after 60 minutes of tied hockey, meaning a franchise theoretically could lose all 82 games during a season and amass 82 points, theoretically enough to secure one of 16 playoff berths. Go winless, and you still can go to the postseason. 


Presumably, tie games were eliminated because deep thinkers detected some teams performing in such a way as to secure a point, particularly on the road. But by handing out a point for merely reaching overtime, the NHL has not eliminated safety-first hockey, especially late in the regular season when points are precious, particularly against intradivision or conference foes. 


The shootouts are a limp quick fix for 65 minutes of inconclusive play and a bit of schtick that cannot disguise the real NHL message: if we can't give you a final score playing by one set of rules for 60 minutes, we will try another set of rules for five minutes, eliminating a skater. Then, if that fails, another trick: penalty shots. Three different games in one! 


This assault from a battery of contrived tiebreakers cheapens the sport and insults knowledgeable spectators, many of whom might have been royally entertained by tie games before 2005. An end-to-end barnburner that winds up 2-2 doesn't leave you feeling cheated, but by requiring a winner and loser, the NHL panders to the casual fan who, if found, then needs a bloodhound to find Versus. 


Or, to put it another way, if regular-season rules are so wonderful, why aren't they used during the postseason? Because that's when you play until 1:21 on a Monday morning, just like you ought to play.