Count Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper among the supporters of three-on-three overtime.
In fact, Cooper likes it so much he thinks it should be longer.
Speaking on The Jeff Marek Show on Tuesday, Cooper said the NHL should consider extending overtime to seven
"Gary, hopefully you're not listening, but if I was going to do something I would just add two minutes to it," Cooper said. "I don't think the overtime is broken. I think once that first shot happens, it just takes one odd-man rush to trigger four more."
Regular season overtime in the NHL has been for five minutes since it was introduced in 1983-84, with the shootout added in 2005-06. Three-on-three overtime was added ahead of the 2015-16 season.
This season, 70.3 per cent of the games that have gone past regulation have ended in overtime, according to Sportsnet Stats, and the Montreal Canadiens lead the NHL with just 10 shootout appearances. In 2014-15, the year before three-on-three was introduced, 23 teams appeared in at least 10 shootouts.
However, changes to the overtime format were floated at the general managers meetings in November. The ideas discussed were intended to prevent teams with possession of the puck from recircling back to their own zones. But, when the topic was brought up at the March GM meetings last week, the managers decided the format should stay as is.
Speaking with Marek, Cooper said that while he understands some people don't like when teams regroup in overtime, he believes the best scoring chances come as a result of that strategy.
"Yes, sometimes there's some regrouping and sometimes, I get it, the guys are running around in the end zone and stuff like that, but the regroup is the actual thing that triggers the rushes," Cooper said. "You can entice bad changes. There's so many things that can happen. But when the guys keep it in the zone the whole time, it's actually really hard to generate any offence."
"What is it, like 70 per cent of the games get decided in overtime, something like that? That would probably go up 10 per cent if they added two minutes."
