After experimenting with the shootout for the 2020-21 season, the ECAC Hockey women’s coaches, by a unanimous 12-0 margin, have voted it down. This season, if no team scores following 3-on-3 five-minute overtime, games will end in a tie. Three points will be awarded to teams that win in regulation. Two points will be earned...
After experimenting with the shootout for the 2020-21 season, the ECAC Hockey women’s coaches, by a unanimous 12-0 margin, have voted it down.
This season, if no team scores following 3-on-3 five-minute overtime, games will end in a tie.
Three points will be awarded to teams that win in regulation. Two points will be earned by teams that win while skating 3-on-3. One point will go to teams that lose in the 3-on-3 overtime session. Each team will be awarded 1.5 points if neither team scores during 3-on-3 play.
“Playoff spots are tough to come by and it’s a tough league,” said Greg Fargo, who led Colgate to the Raiders’ first-ever ECAC Tournament championship last winter. “Some games are fit to be tied.”
With every point important, the coaches felt the shootout was too individual of a format to determine critical points.
The ECAC voted to use shootouts to determine winners last season. Due to the pandemic, however, only four programs — Colgate, Clarkson, Quinnipiac and St. Lawrence — took to the ice for an abbreviated season. Only Colgate played more than 20 games.
Prior to this season, all four head coaches of those programs were joined by their colleagues at Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, RPI, Union and Yale in voting to end the shootout experience.
“We felt it was something that was so far removed from the game,” St. Lawrence head coach Chris Wells said.
“I’m not a big fan of the shootout,” Cornell head coach Doug Derraugh said. “I do like it from an entertainment standpoint. But in college hockey, when you have a limited number of games … every point is so valuable and important in our league.”
“We want to play overtime. We want to have hockey (and not a 1-on-1 play) used to decide games,” Union’s Josh Sciba said.
Although the vote was unanimous, first-year Dartmouth head coach Liz Keady-Norton said she was “pretty mixed” about the issue.
“I think it enhances the fan experience,” she said of the shootout. “I could change my mind. I do like the 3-on-3 for overtime. It’s really exciting. It’s up and down.”
Harvard head coach Katey Stone, a mentor to many coaches in the league, has seen plenty during her days behind the bench.
She said she was “happy” the shootout experiment was nixed.
“We’ll give the 3-on-3 a try. We’re not the NHL and we don’t need to be,” Stone said. “I think we have a fabulous product.”
