Common ground is a tough thing to locate for the NHL Players Association and the NHL’s owners and general managers. We’ve witnessed annual battles over the salary cap and equipment size. We’ve lost an entire season, and parts of others, because of their inability to agree on … well, anything.
Well, turns out they can agree on one thing: The shootout, and how they want to reduce its influence over playoff qualification and seeding.
They understand the NHL sees it as an entertaining gimmick that puts an artificial cap on a game’s length for the sake of television in the regular season; they just don’t want to see that gimmick as anything but a last resort when deciding who wins the game (or, in the NHL, gets the extra point in the standings).