>
> On Fri, 20 May 1994, Mike Machnik wrote:
>
> > Chaz should have written that a shootout punishes a defensive team.
>
>David Josselyn then wrote:
>
> What the shootous would allow (assuming there were enough overtime ties)
> would be for teams that do well in shootouts (whose snipers and
> goaltenders are superior to their opponents, who are now without the
> potentially equalizing talent of their defensemen) to continue to move up
> and away in the standings from less offensively talented teams who opt
> for defensive styles. It need not be necessary, as Mike suggested, for
> those teams to be "close in the standings". A shootout win that a BU or a
> Maine picks up over a team like Merrimack (which, in it's history in
> Hockey East, as Mike I'm sure will attest, has both been less talented
> than those other two teams and has chosen a defensive style) robs
> Merrimack of the only thing they have to gain from a tie: the ability to
> keep pace with that team pointswise on that given night. Sure, the loser
> gets one point, but if the winner pulls away by getting two, they still
> increase their lead.
>
 
Is this bad?  To reward offensively talented teams may well be the right thing
to do.  So that I don't offend any college teams, let me pose the question
using pro teams : If you have a chance to watch an offensively gifted team
like the Red Wings or a Roger Neilsen-coached team, which will you choose?
ANyone remember the time Milbury couldn't stomach anymore of Neilsen's team
play and had to leave the bench?  And the general fan reaction to a visiting
Neilsen team?  Hey, in pituitary ball, the four corners and other slowdown
tactics were the only way for untalented teams to have a chance against the
big boys, but a shooting clock was put in because those tactics were hurting
the game.
 
I'm not saying that college hockey is flooded with Roger Neilsen wanna-be's,
but I think that the more offensively-oriented the game is, the better off
the sport is.  IMO if the more talented teams that try to play offensively
are pulling away from the less talented teams that are playing defensively,
then that's the way it ought to be.
 
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