Monday, May 15, 2006
I Hate Mondays: Working Overtime
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It's 15 minutes before your work shift ends and the hamster that runs the treadmill inside your head has already tired out for the day.
Then you're boss walks in and asks you to put in a few hours of overtime.
Not cool.
Overtime can be long and enduring, but not all types are that bad. In the realm of sports, when two teams have fully exerted themselves throughout regulation time and no victor has triumphed, an extra frame of overtime is cool.
There is a boiling point, though. There is a time when added time, particularly in the National Hockey League, turns from exciting to excessive.
The NHL has already renovated a heavily-scrutinized overtime formula prior to this season, and introduced a shootout to solve the age-old "tie" dilemma, but just as traditionalists have grown accustomed to this fresh amendment and newer fans have taken a liking to the new NHL, the league should now revisit another pressing problem: playoff overtime.
When the extra period starts, fans become enamored with the level of intensity of playoff hockey and the game really emanates of urgency and passion. But by the third frame, both the on-lookers and the players themselves are in dire search for an ending.
The bottom line is that while most people do not have the time to watch a sporting event from start to finish, the main goal is to either see the final minutes of the match or to view how the game was decided.
And if the grouping of people who can watch the full 60 minutes of regulation is in the minority, then the number of people who are plugged into the full four-and-a-half hours of the San Jose Sharks versus the Edmonton Oilers Game 3 is definitely few.
We already know that the sport of hockey needs to sell to the many, instead of the few, and when NHL playoff games go past one period of overtime, since it becomes too much of a commitment to continue watching, there needs to be a shorter, less time-consuming solution.
Shootouts could be the answer, although hardcore hockey fans convert to emotionally unstable individuals when this idea is presented, and four-on-four play is another option.
If both of these resolutions are acceptable enough to be used mainstream during the regular season, then it is only a matter of time before they will be viable in the post-season.
The NHL isn't the only sport with protracted playoff games as the Super Bowl breaks the four-hour benchmark and so do many Major League Baseball Championship Series games, but hockey is not on the same footing, popularity-wise.
While modifying one of the sport's greatest assets will not sit well with old school thinkers, the bottom line is that the game will gain better appeal with a shortened version of overtime.
For example, look at what the shootout has done for regular season viewing. Few fans quit on a game in overtime, knowing that they might see both team's top three forwards taking penalty shots. During International play, the shootout has always been a solution after one period of overtime, and rarely has anyone changed the channel in the midst of a Jaromir Jagr/Martin Brodeur or Peter Forsberg/Dominik Hasek head-to-head.
As it stands now, when a playoff hockey game hits overtime, it could take two minutes, or it could last two hours. With no end in sight, viewers are more likely to tune away.
It is time to find a faster fix.
NHL playoffs and overtime mix like Mondays and me.
"The strong man is not the good wrestler; the strong man is only the one who controls himself when he is angry." — The Prophet Mohammad
Ok, so what's next, make extra innings in a MLB playoff game come down to a home run derby? Atleast I know I'll get to see Manny and Big Papi hit some out of the park? Get real. There isn't much tradition left in sports today, but the sudden death playoffs is something real and can be very magical. To get rid of it is ridiculous and should never happen.