Follow Paul on Twitter: @paulstewart22

Three-on-three play in regulation is uncommon but not quite rare in hockey. However, five minutes of three-on-three (barring penalties) is something unprecedented in the NHL. We all know full well why the new OT format was adopted: The league wants fewer games to go to shootouts and the use of a somewhat different 3-on-3 format in the American Hockey League last year sharply reduced the number of shootouts.

That's all well and good, but I do wonder if the NHL and NHLPA considered all of the potential consequences that having so many prolonged 3-on-3 segments could have over the course of the season. As a frame of reference, 305 games last season in the NHL went to overtime.

What could very easily happen is that teams will severely shorten the benches in 3-on-3 even more than they do at 4-on-4. Even with the best conditioned athletes with very fast recovery times, there's a lot of fatigue that kicks in when there is so much open ice to cover and only a few players being rotated so as to give the skill players as many cracks as possible at scoring to end the game.

The three-point game in the NHL isn't going away. Teams will still play to assure themselves of at least one point. No doubt there will be many teams that play a slew of overtime/shootout games over the course of the season, and ones who fare the best have a greatly increased chance of making the playoffs. Doing so, however, could come at major wear-down cost because the 3-on-3s (which will still count the same for playoff tiebreaker purposes as regulation wins) are going to be very taxing when they occur in high volume.

For this reason, I think the NHLPA was wise to voice opposition to longer OT period time limits (such as the AHL had a year ago). Five minutes of 3-on-3 is going to feel like a lot of time already. Even a couple extra minutes would be downright brutal with all that open ice.

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about how NHL coaches increasingly roll four lines and three defense pairs as much as possible. That is true to a degree if you look only at ice times but the "hard" minutes are still skewed. Television timeouts and today's icing rules also keep certain players out on the ice for much more protracted periods, albeit with a brief respite in the middle, than in the past.

Something else to keep in mind: While going to 3-on-3 will most certainly significantly reduce the number of games that go to shootouts, keep in mind that NHL coaches are pretty smart and today's game is structured to the Nth degree. In other words, there will be strategies devised to play defensively. As such, I'm not convinced that the "firewagon hockey" entertainment factor is going to be as high as most seem to think. Time will tell, but I think coaches will adapt.

The jury is still out on what the impact of the new OT rules will be over the long haul both on the standings and on the players themselves. As with many things in life, major changes can have unintended side effects that aren't always desirable.

Final thought: The biggest objection hockey purists have to shootouts is that, unlike an in-game penalty shot, it is a contrived situation and lacks a team element to it. Well, 3-on-3 is a bit more team oriented but it is also equally contrived. The manpower situation can conceivably arise during a game but you won't see it too often. Even when you do, it's usually very brief. As such, I'm not sure how legitimate is to declare the 3-on-3 to be all that much more of a "genuine hockey" means to settle games, especially when overtime wins carry more weight than shootouts for playoff seeding purposes.


************************************************************************



************************************************************************

Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born citizen to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the first American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games.

The longtime referee heads Officiating by Stewart, a consulting, training and evaluation service for officials. Stewart also maintains a busy schedule as a public speaker, fund raiser and master-of-ceremonies for a host of private, corporate and public events. As a non-hockey venture, he is the owner of Lest We Forget.