Ten-minute overtime? Longer TV timeouts? 4 Nations Face-Off is NHL testing ground

MONTREAL — Canada and Sweden traded chances back and forth, skating up and down the ice for 3-on-3 overtime that provided dazzling entertainment in the opener of the 4 Nations Face-Off.

By the time Mitch Marner scored the winner for Canada, more than six minutes had elapsed. Had it been during the NHL regular season, the horn would have sounded at the five-minute mark and the game decided in a shootout.

Extending OT to 10 minutes is one of the experiments taking place at the tournament that could go into use as soon as next season. There's still plenty of debate over whether it should, and Marner's goal made it a hot topic in Montreal.

“I don’t know. It’s a good question,” Finland captain Aleksander Barkov said Thursday. “Obviously there’s a lot of games — 82 regular-season games — and on top of it, if you keep adding longer and longer overtimes, I don’t know how guys would take that. I’m fine with how it is right now.”

Canada’s Nathan MacKinnon, who played more than a third of OT, said the discussion even came up in Canada's locker room on Wednesday night. His answer about 10-minute overtimes becoming a reality in the NHL was clearer than he could see by the end of that game.

“No. No. No,” MacKinnon said. “I was happy when Marner scored because I didn’t have much left to give, so 5 to 7 would be good.”

Changing the rules would require an agreement between the league and Players' Association, though it's good timing for that with collective bargaining talks ongoing and official negotiations on the horizon. Adding more of a workload without extra pay is a strike against extending OT, and it would tax the top players more than others.

“I like it as far as I think it’s more fun, overtime,” U.S. goaltender Jake Oettinger said. “You have to ask the top players that would be playing extra minutes, I think, for them, but I vote yes on it. I think it’s great.”

It would also increase the likelihood of games ending before a shootout, which Canada's Mark Stone called “a glorified skills competition.” Self-professed shootout-hating U.S. defenseman Zach Werenski would prefer that but is concerned at the potential consequences.

“In overtime, usually your top guys are going and if it’s a back to back or whatnot, obviously it takes a lot out of you,” Werenski said. “It was something to mess around with, I think, especially maybe preseason or something just to see how guys feel. I wouldn’t be opposed to going to 10 minutes. I just don’t like shootouts that much.”

The NHL is also using the tournament to try adding 30 seconds to each of the three television timeouts every period and subtracting a minute from each of the two intermissions. Canada coach Jon Cooper isn't sure about how much of an impact that might have, if any.

“TV timeouts are long as it is,” Cooper said. “Can you recharge some of your top-end players? Of course you can. But then what does it do to the guys that haven’t been out there, haven’t been out before the TV timeout? And now you’ve got to wait through that. It’s kind of the double-edged sword in that part.”

The 4 Nations is also using the international system of awarding three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime or shootout win, one for an overtime or shootout loss and none for a regulation loss.

“I feel like it makes a bigger difference in the end,” Sweden's Lucas Raymond said. “I’m used to it back in Sweden when I was playing, it was always a three-point system. It’s a little bit different, but it for sure brings a bigger impact.”

Changing the point system is the least likely thing for the NHL. When asked about it, Commissioner Gary Bettman has said there is not much of an appetite to abandon the current format of two points for a win of any kind and one for an overtime or shootout loss.