Recently polled our Social Media followers with the choice of SUDDEN DEATH ORVERTIME OR SHOOTOUT in hockey.
An Overwhelming 97% of fans would prefer Sudden Death Overtime and only 3% prefer the Shootout. Not that I or most people are surprised by the results, but the amount of passion in the comments was astounding.
Here are a few of the comments to…
“Overtime maintains the “team” ideology while the shootout does the opposite. The shootout should never be used to decide a champion.”
“I can’t imagine any real hockey fan not despising the shootout, it is so totally not hockey, deciding the outcome of a game in a team sport in such an individualistic way is beyond insane.”
“Shootouts should never determine the game it’s a “team” sport!”
“Old school- Sudden death. If you have a shoot out you might as well have at the beginning of the game score is tied then”
“Kids hockey we couldn’t afford to run into other games following ours so we took play-off series to 8 and 9 games .GTHL now offers overtime for a limited time . Yesterday was an example of the game playing out and have it won or lost by the team not penalty shots ….Sweden may or may not have won but they could have won as a team not an individual skills session .I don’t like the shoot out”
“Sudden death. Shootout is fun to watch, but an unnatural outcome to a game that both sides battled 60 minutes to win. Imagine a baseball game being tied after 9 innings, then you go to a home run derby format to decide the victor. Shootout tarnishes the battle and effort put forth in the actual game.”
“Shoot-out, but rather expose a teams depth!!! Start at the bottom of the line-up and work upwards. 20, 19, 18 ….. based on points avg.”
“Toe to toe fight between a designated fighter from each team!”
“I don’t know how the players can even feel great about winning a championship game via a shootout? I know not here in the NHL at least will a player agree to have a championship determined via shootout. Yet another European way of ruining the great Canadian pass time.”
“I like them both”
“Hate them. What’s the point of playing an entire game just to leave it to chance? Might as well just pick names from a hat, play Overtime Bingo or Duck Duck Goose. Hell, why don’t we just skip the game and have the team captains come out of the dressing room in street clothes for an exciting coin toss? Something like that would never fly in a true game of sport.”
And finally, my two cents..I also prefer Sudden Death Overtime allowing the game to stay in it’s true form…5 on 5, especially in international world championship tournaments, making it a team effort to win the game and not making it an individual competition.
After all, there is no ‘I’ in TEAM!
– Tim Turk Hockey
