In reply to:
Two many pointless powerplays will hurt the game as well.
I agree with you Craig, in the long run if this many penalties continue to be called the game will suffer. I really liked Kariya's comments a few games into the season when a reporter asked him what he thought of all the penalty calls. He said something to the effect of, 'it took us 8 years to mess the game up this badly, at least give us a couple of months to get it sorted back out'. Makes sense to me.
I understand what you mean about the shootout, but IMO it is nice to see some finality - I think there was over 300 tie games the last season, heck Tampa had 20% of their games end in ties. I'm not going to compare it to baseball or basketball because i think there is no real comparison (very few OT games in basketball and lots of points, baseball a lot more runs scored than goals in hockey so much easier to settle in OT). It would seem though this year that with scoring being up they probably didn't need the shootout, but the fear of it certainly does get the players going in OT. I guess what i'm trying to say is, it doesn't hurt my feelings any and it's nice to see an actual winner-loser at the end of the game instead of another tie. (I would personally part with the shootout if they let the two goons fight it out to determine the winner - that would be pretty cool!
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