Okay. With all of that said, there's just one thing I care about. I know I'm not alone in this one, but there are certainly people who won't agree with me here. Whatever. Here goes:
Please, in the name of Badger Bob, no fucking shootouts.
I'm pretty sure that of all the things that could come out of the AHCA meetings (dramatic conference realignment, Paul Kelly performing magic tricks, UAH giving the CCHA the finger), I can handle any of it. Life will go on, and college hockey will find a way to adjust to whatever goofy nonsense that comes up. But I'd rather take George Fabian's skate grinder to my temple before I accept shootouts in the BTHC.
It's perhaps not important to articulate why I don't want shootouts. That argument has been made before. In short: it's an arbitrary way to "win" a tie game, it's like settling football ties with punt-pass-kick, yadda yadda yadda. That's all been said.
My only addition to the debate is that I don't understand what's wrong with a tie. It's not a win, but it's not a loss. When two teams play 65 minutes of hockey and it doesn't decide something, you can either keep playing hockey or you can just be a grown up and admit that maybe neither team earned the win, and they can be equals (if only for one night). It might feel weird to not have a final conclusion to the game, but you know what? I like the simple and pure logic of the tie.
And I like being able to feel like a 3 point weekend at home is good enough.
I get that there's a certain "lowest common denominator" aspect to the shootout. It's designed to be exciting to lure in the common non-hockey fan. "Hey, look at hockey! You might not like this sport because you have the attention span of a cat on Red Bull, but look at this fun gimmick!"
It's that LCD factor that makes me nervous that the BTHC actually will push for shootouts. It's the same thing that makes people think that canned music is an acceptable thing to have at sporting events. (Hint: It's not*, and I'm mildly convinced that Jump Around cursed us early on in our famed OT winless streak) There's even a little bit of an LCD factor to the fact that the BTHC will exist in major part because the B1G ADs are convinced that more people will care about Badger Hockey simply because we're playing Penn State instead of North Dakota. (This is where you roll your eyes...)
At the end of the day, I just don't want shootouts. I've hated watching the NHL award wins from tie games, and I'm holding out hope that the NCAA can come to their senses and avoid the stupid gimmick.
Screw shootouts. Who's with me?
* There are rare exceptions to my hatred of canned music, but that's another subject for another time.
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