NHL 3-on-3 overtime: Success or failure in debut season?

The NHL regular season is over, so it’s time to ask one of the essential questions of the 2015-16 campaign:

Did 3-on-3 overtime successfully kill the shootout? 

No. But it significantly wounded it.

The final numbers for the NHL show that the percentage of overtime games that ended before the shootout jumped from the 4-on-4 format in the previous season. Take a look:

So that’s roughly 61.1 percent of overtime games that ended in the 3-on-3, vs. 44.8 percent of overtime games that ended in the 4-on-4 in the previous season.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the 3-on-3 overtime became less effective in preventing shootouts as the season went on.

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After 171 overtime games this season, via ESPN, 109 of them were decided in the 3-on-3 – that’s 63.7 percent, or slightly higher than what we finished with. This happened because teams gradually started playing more conservatively in overtime, so as not to give their opponents a golden chance to win on a turnover or odd-man rush. This also happened because some teams know their chances are slightly better in the shootout and the 3-on-3, and they want to go to there.

(Like the Florida Panthers, for example, who has 10 of their 16 overtime games go to the shootout, where they were 7-3. Your Atlantic Division champions!)

How does it all stack up with the OT experiments in the American Hockey League, you ask?

Keep in mind that the AHL has had three different kinds of overtime in the last three seasons: 4-on-4 for five minutes, and then a shootout; 4-on-4 for four minutes, and then 3-on-3 for the rest of a seven-minute overtime; and then 3-on-3 for five minutes this season.

* Keep in mind those 2015-16 numbers are through Wednesday night’s games, as the AHL finishes up its regular season this weekend.

As you can see, the 3-on-3 was slightly more effective in the AHL, as it had 247 overtime games (less than in the NHL) with 163 decided in the 3-on-3. And oddly enough, those numbers actually improved as the season went on: Through 394 games this season, the AHL saw 41.4 percent of its overtime game end in a shootout.

So what did we learn in Year 1 of the 3-on-3 OT in the NHL?

1. It reduces shootouts. Even as teams took their foot off the accelerator and played more conservatively, you still ended up with less than 40 percent of overtime games ending in a skills competition. What this means for next season, who knows?

2. It’s a super fun All-Star Game format, provided there’s a fan-voted fourth liner who elevates his game to MVP levels in leading his team to victory.

3. The AHL’s 4-on-4 and 3-on-3 seven-minute OT hybrid remains the most effective way to kill off the shootout.

Back when the AHL tried it out in 2014-15, they had a split of 56 goals scored in the 4-on-4 and 45 goals scored in the 3-on-3 of the first 101 OT goals scored that season. For whatever reason, that format worked and, as you can see, worked better than the 4-on-4 in reducing shootouts.

Why didn’t the NHL just use that system? Please recall that the GMs and Board of Governors were in favor of it, for the most part, but that the NHLPA argued against tacking on an extra two minutes to overtime before the shootout. The NHL just wanted to get its 3-on-3 on, so it backed down and settled on the current format.

And yet when you look at the AHL numbers from that season, the average overtime game went 4:30 into the extra session, which was only 22 seconds longer than in the previous season (in the 4-on-4).

It’s expected the NHL will maintain the current overtime format for the 2016-17 season.

What did you think of the 3-on-3? Anything you’d like to see change to make it more exciting or effective? Or are you gone with the gimmick already?

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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