Three on three overtime is a possession game pretending to be a skills contest

Nobody wins the extra period by skating fast; they win it by refusing to give the puck back.

Nobody wins overtime by skating fast. It looks like that from the couch. All that open ice, a defenceman caught alone, a forward with a runway. The reality on the bench is closer to a chess clock.

With three skaters a side, a change is the most dangerous thing you can do, because there is no fourth body to cover the gap while a tired player crawls to the boards. So the fundamental question of the extra period is not who has the best skill player. It is who can hold the puck long enough to force the other side to change while they are still chasing.

That is why the good overtime teams look almost timid on first viewing. They will carry the puck back over their own blue line rather than force a two-on-two. They will circle. They will make a pass that goes backwards forty feet and looks like surrender. What they are doing is buying seconds, and seconds are the currency, because a line that has been defending for seventy of them cannot chase any more and has to change, and the change is when the goal comes.

Attacking too early is the classic error. A three-on-two rush that ends in a shot from a bad angle gives the puck away for free, and now your three tired attackers are the ones defending an odd-man break in the other direction. The shot was a gift. In a five-on-five game a bad shot costs you nothing much; here it can end the night in eight seconds.

There is a coaching consequence people underrate. The best overtime unit is not necessarily your three best players. It is a puck-carrying defenceman who is comfortable retreating, one forward who can protect the puck along the wall against pressure, and one who can actually finish. Put three finishers out and they will all want the puck to go forward, and the first turnover ends it.

I like the format, for what that is worth. It produces goals, it ends games, and it rewards a genuine skill.

I just wish the broadcast would stop calling it a shootout with skates. It is the most patient hockey played all night.