Linus Ullmark said bluntly this week: "There should be a change." He followed that with a prescription — in his words, "We’ve already changed the offensive game a lot in general, with 3-on-3 and overtime. My two cents, we should add five more minutes of overtime like at the 4 Nations."
The comment landed on one of the sport’s persistent fault lines: whether the regular season should keep the shootout as the definitive decider. A small Bluesky poll of roughly 50 respondents found just 24 percent supported the shootout, while half of respondents said they preferred longer overtime and a quarter said they would accept ties. A preseason survey from The Hockey News had also flagged extended overtime as the favored compromise in discussions that predated the shootout era.
The numbers are stark because they track a long, incremental change to how the game is finished. Overtime returned to the NHL in 1983 as five minutes of five-on-five sudden death. In 1999 the league shifted to four-on-four overtime, and after the 2004–05 lockout the NHL eliminated ties and introduced the shootout so games would end with a winner. The shootout itself arrived in 2005. In 2015 the league again altered the regular-season finish, moving to three-on-three overtime explicitly to reduce the number of games that reached a shootout. The Stanley Cup Playoffs, by contrast, still use five-on-five sudden death overtime until someone scores.
Ullmark’s proposal is simple and precise: add five more minutes of overtime. He invoked the structure used at the 4 Nations, suggesting the extra time would be an extension of play rather than a skills competition. The shootout, as it exists now, typically begins with three shooters each and can expand into additional rounds if necessary; it was introduced so the league could have games end with a winner. That property pleased many fans when it arrived, but several of the facts driving the current debate are plain: the shootout decides games and, for a growing number, it has become increasingly anticlimactic.
The friction in the debate is predictable and deeply woven into how different parts of the fan base feel about the game. The source framing this discussion says fans accepted the shootout when it arrived, but its appeal did not last in traditional hockey markets. Those stronger markets, the source says, have a greater attachment to how the game plays out over 60 minutes and are more hostile to the idea that a single attacker and goalie can decide a team’s fate after regulation. At the same time, the league and broadcasters value games that finish with a winner and with predictable television windows — the very reasons the shootout was adopted after the 2004–05 lockout.
That contradiction — the business need for a clear result versus a fan and player preference for resolving games through extended team play — is the central tension here. The switch to three-on-three in 2015 was meant to reduce shootouts by opening ice and creating more scoring chances; it succeeded to an extent but did not erase the shootout or the dissatisfaction it generates among a vocal slice of the audience. The poll numbers and the preseason survey suggest a nontrivial portion of that audience, and some players, prefer longer overtime instead.
The practical proposal Ullmark floated is narrow and testable: five more minutes of sudden-death overtime in the regular season, mirroring formats used in some international competitions. If adopted it would reduce the number of games decided by three shooters each or by later rounds and would push more decisive play back onto five-on-five and three-on-three structures. The broader consequence is political — it would be a concession to traditionalists and a rejection of the shootout’s primacy.
The single, consequential question the league now faces is this: will the NHL extend regular-season overtime and move away from the shootout, or will it preserve the shootout as the definitive finish because it guarantees a winner and clear broadcast timing? Ullmark’s call has sharpened that question and put it back on the table for debate between players, fans and the league’s decision-makers.
