By ANTHONY PUCIK
ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR
Early Saturday morning, St. Louis Blues’ forward T.J. Oshie helped lift the United States to victory over Russia 3-2 in a shootout. Oshie scored all four goals of the shootout in six attempts. Now, I know what many of you are thinking: How could Oshie have had more than one opportunity in the shootout? Well, international rules state that three separate shooters must attempt to score in the shootout, but then any player is allowed to take the remaining shots. Not only can the shooters who took the first three shots then take shots again, but the same person can continue to take attempts until the shootout ends. So Oshie, who has a 70 percent success rate in the shootout in the NHL this season, was called on to take the first shot and scored to give the United States the advantage. After the shootout was tied after three shooters, he took the next five shots, scoring on three of them and winning the game for team USA.
After the “Oshie can you see” puns and Oshie for president tweets ceased, I couldn’t help but think how silly it was that Oshie was able to take shot after shot after shot after shot in the shootout, something that is unheard of in the NHL. Once a player takes a chance in the shootout in the NHL, he can’t try again, even if the shootout goes 12 rounds. There have been shootouts whose heroes were fourth line grinders with no puck handling abilities whatsoever. But under international rules, the top three guys (or in the USA’s case, its’ best guy), can be rotated after the third round to give a team the best chance to win. It makes you wonder whether the NHL should adopt this rule for its shootouts.
Let me precede my answer with this, I absolutely hate the shootout. I know it would be impossible to continuously play overtime periods until a team scored, especially when teams play back to back games, but I just don’t like the idea of a shootout deciding an extra point in the standings. A shootout is for all intents and purposes a skills competition. For a vital point to be decided by something that is based on pure skill and a one on one battle between skater and goaltender is silly to me. I would rather see the old rules, where games end in a tie after overtime, with each team earning a point, or just see overtimes until there was a winner.
That said, though, the shootout between Russia and the United States on Saturday was extremely exciting. It was one of the greatest shootouts I have ever seen. The Russians sent out some of the best shootout performers in the world – Pavel Datsyuk, Evgeni Malkin and Ilya Kovalchuk. Oshie seemed like he used a different move every time down the ice to score a shootout goal. It was the best against the best, so although it was still a skills competition, it was exciting to watch. I think it would be very interesting to see the NHL adopt this system. It would change the dynamic and save many grinders and defensemen the embarrassment of trying to score breakaways that they never anticipated having to take.
Exciting or not, I still don’t think shootouts are a great way to end a game. The gold medal game in the Olympics can be decided by a shootout, something that is featured in the NHL Skills Competition during All-Star Weekend. What if after the first overtime in an NBA Finals game the teams went to a Dunk Contest? And, even if it was Blake Griffin battling LeBron James, would that really be an indication of who won that game? No it wouldn’t, and that is essentially what the shootout does in the NHL.
If the NHL must keep the shootout, I think it would be interesting to see it under the international rules, but I would prefer it be eliminated altogether.