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The Shootout

A look at the history of the lamest way to settle sports

Kevin Welsh, Features Editor
Pal

“A penalty shot is the most exciting play
in hockey.” —Every Broadcaster Ever
It’s finally happened. Commencing
with the 2005—2006 season, the
National Hockey League (NHL) will use
shootouts to decide games that are tied
throughout regulation and overtime.
Purists everywhere cringe; while execu-

 

tives wring their hands with glee while
thinking about the billions and billions of
new fans that will tune in to watch these
exciting contests. For some, the shootout
is a long overdue measure to eradicate
what many North American sports fans
consider the most pointless outcome of
sports: a tie. For others, the shootout
represents a bastardized way of declaring
a winner.

For those who aren’t in the know
(hey, do you live in Canada or what?) the
shootout in hockey is a series of penalty
shots. After tied games, each team desig-
nates five shooters and one goaltender.

 

 

Each team alternates shooters; the skater
gets control of the puck at centre ice and
skates towards goal. The shooter cannot
score on a rebound and must shoot the
puck before he crosses the goal line.
Naturally, the goaltender tries to stop
them.

This may seem like an awfully artifi-
cial way to settle a hockey game, especial-
ly to long-time NHL fans. However, the
shootout as a tiebreaker has been in
effect for years in other leagues and
competitions. The now defunct
International Hockey League (IHL) used
shootouts before they were in vogue.
Then again, the IHL, traditionally a farm
league to the NHL, was experiencing a
period of growth where they moved out
of traditional minor league hockey mar-
kets like Flint, Michigan and Dayton,
Ohio and into major league markets like
Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, and
Los Angeles. In many cases, the IHL was

competing with NHL clubs in the same
market, and was looking for ways to set
themselves apart.

Now, many North American minor
leagues, as well as the National Collegiate
Athletic Association (NCAA) have
adopted the shootout. Most importantly,
though, especially as far as the NHL is
concerned, is that the International Ice
Hockey Federation (IHF) also employs
the shootout. If it’s okay to settle
Olympic medals with the shootout, sure-
ly it must be okay to settle NHL games
this way.

Perhaps the NHL should talk to the
fans, though. Many Canadians won’t be
able to forget a pair of painful elimina-
tions from the Olympics thanks to the
shootout. In 1994, Sweden’s Peter
Forsberg scored against Canadian goal-
tender and former Vancouver Canuck,
Corey Hirsch, to clinch the gold medal.
Four years later, in Nagano, Japan,
Canada was again eliminated by the
shootout, this time falling in the semi-
final to the Czech Republic. Many fans
will claim that a series of artificial break-
aways is simply no way to decide a com-
petitive game of any kind, much less a
gold medal. Then again, scores of
Canadians were elated in 1994 when Luc
Robitaille scored the ITHF World
Championship goal in a shootout.

While the shootout is new to the
NHL, and relatively new to the world of
hockey, in general, the concept, itself, has
been around for a long, long time.
Fereral International Football
Association (FIFA), the world governing
body of soccer, has been using penalty
shots for years to settle championships.
In 1994, Italy’s Roberto Baggio stepped
up and blasted a shot over the net, there-
by awarding the World Cup (arguably the
most prestigious sporting championship
ever) to Brazil.

Not content with using merely penal-
ty shots, American soccer leagues have
used a different type of shootout to set-
tle soccer games for decades. In the old
North American Soccer League (NASL)
and American Professional Soccer
League (APSL), a series of breakaways
was also employed. Again, each team
would designate five players, each of
whom would get control of the ball 35
yards out from the goal. While they drib-
bled in on net, the goaltender was free to
come out of his goal. Shooters had five
seconds to take a shot. In the NASL, a
shooter even had the option of asking

krwelsh@canada.com

the official to bounce the ball ahead of
them, so they could try to volley it in
from distance.

The reasons for the NASL, a league
which thrived in the 1970s, to employ a
shootout are pretty much the same rea-
sons the NHL is touting now: tie games
are boring, penalty shots are exciting, and
it will help decide games in time for tele-
vision audiences to tune into their regu-
larly scheduled programming,

Interestingly enough, though, when
Major League Soccer (MLS) debuted in
1996, the shootout was again in effect.
However, a few years ago, MLS
announced they were abandoning
shootouts in favour of brief overtime
periods and, ultimately, tie games. Fans
everywhere (and by everywhere I mean
traditionally anti-soccer Americans)
rejoiced. ‘The verdict was in: fans knew a
gimmick when they saw it, and will even-
tually become bored or annoyed with it.

People still ask me, “What was
(Canadian coach) Mare Crawford think-
ing when he didn’t select Wayne Gretzky
to take a shot in the Nagano shootout?”
My answer would be simple: they re not
playing hockey anymore. They’re playing
some brutal, highly pressurized game of
poker with none of the spontaneity of a
free-flowing team sport. Whether we’re
talking soccer or hockey, at the end of
the day it boils down to the same thing:
It’s now a different game. It’s certainly
got nothing to do with the game that just
transpired—no more momentum, cre-
ativity, or imagination. It may be exciting,
but it’s also a shame.

Yet, most hockey and soccer fans at
least grudgingly accept the shootout.
Maybe it has something to do with
shooting something past a goaltender
and into a net. I find it hard to believe
that using free throws to decide basket-
ball games, home run derbies for base-
ball games, or field goals for football
games would ever be considered an
exciting and fair way to end a big game.
It should be noted, though, that while
FIFA, the ITHF, and the Olympics are
willing to settle championship games in
this fashion, the NHL has pledged not to
employ the shootout to settle playoff
games. It will be mammoth, five-period
overtime sessions as usual, and though
many fans will have to be patient the ulti-
mate payoff will be either wonderful or
justly heartbreaking. It’s the way sports
was meant to be