NHL’s overtime rules reign; other stuff needs fine-tuning

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The NHL has some stupid rules that need to be changed, but no sport has a better tie-breaking format than hockey’s overtime, particularly during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

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Next goal wins! Five-on-five, 20 minutes at a time until Max Domi or Alex Ovechkin — who each surprisingly tallied their first post-season OT winners this past week — scores the celebratory goal. Is there anything sweeter?

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Scoring twice in overtime explains how the Dallas Stars led their best-of-seven series 2-1 against the Colorado Avalanche, despite leading for only 62 seconds during their first three games.

Don’t ever change that overtime rule. Don’t try that bastardized 3-on-3 stuff from the regular season, with teams backtracking repeatedly until they eventually, hopefully see a scoring chance.

Unlike other sports, hockey has just enough offence and the right amount of scoring opportunities to play next-goal-wins.

Soccer can’t; they could play for hours and never break a nil-nil deadlock. It’s conversely too easy to score in basketball, so the NBA plays five-minute overtime sessions until someone is ahead at the buzzer. It’s not “sudden-death,” the outdated, hyperbolic phrase that used to describe NHL overtimes.

Baseball gives each team an opportunity to score a winning run, with MLB putting a ghost runner at second base in extra innings to make it easier. But only during the regular season.

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Please explain how the tie-breaker works in tennis. Golfers play extra holes until someone wins outright, which is the second-best tie-breaking format in professional sports.

The CFL also gives each team an opportunity for scoring a decisive touchdown, field goal, safety or rouge.

The NFL? Puh-leez! No pro league has devised worse overtimes than the NFL.

In the NHL it ain’t broke, so don’t fix it. These Stanley Cup playoffs remain way more entertaining than WrestleMania, with much better plot twists. Can John Cena play goal for the Edmonton Oilers? Or maybe he could referee and not give Ottawa Senators forward Ridly Greig a phantom roughing penalty while getting pulverized by Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Anthony Stolarz in a WWE-like showdown.

There are way too many gambling ads during the telecasts and hearing legendary studio host Ron MacLean recite pre-game parlays continues to be tremendously sad, but in-studio analysts Kevin Bieksa, Kelly Hrudey, Luke Gazdic, Elliotte Friedman and Derek Lalonde — a former NHL coach who Bieksa calls “Newsy” — remain insightful.

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So are their American-network counterparts Steve Levy, Mark Messier and P.K. Subban. The latter pair are so mismatched, coming from completely different eras, that it’s downright captivating hearing them talk hockey. They’re more engaging than the harmonica group playing the U.S. national anthem before the Los Angeles Kings’ home opener, but who doesn’t want those sweet harp-players back for an encore?

There’s a Battle of Ontario and a Battle of Florida.

And the schedule is confounding — the Winnipeg Jets and Toronto each led their respective series 2-0 before the reigning-champion Florida Panthers easily beat the hometown Tampa Bay Lightning 6-2 in the first game of their series.

Very briefly, while everything seems rosy in the NHL, here are a few stupid things that need to be tidied up right now:

— Teams that win regular-season games in regulation get three points, overtime winners get two points and overtime losers get one point. The PWHL wisely uses that format. The NHL used a 3-2-1 format in the 4 Nations Face-Off standings and that worked out pretty well.

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— Coincidental penalties should always make teams play short-handed. Hockey is a rare sport that, because of penalties, temporarily reduces its active participants. Exploit those 4-on-3 advantages.

— Remove all video challenges, or at least offside reviews.

— Erase the behind-the-net trapezoid. Let goalies handle and pass the puck anywhere in the defensive zone.

— Players on a team icing the puck can stay on-ice after the whistle blows. Rejiggering the lineup takes too much time and gives the offending team a breather anyway.

— Implement a post-season salary cap so teams can’t stash healthy players on injury lists (LTIR) then bring them back for the playoffs, as Colorado has done with Gabriel Landeskog, Florida with Matthew Tkachuk and Edmonton with Evander Kane. Call it the “Kelly McCrimmon Rule” to honour the Vegas Golden Knights GM who has exploited it most efficiently in past seasons with Mark Stone and Jack Eichel.

For the record, puck-over-the-glass penalties and regular-season shootouts are OK.

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