Overtime and the shootout — why the playoffs are a different sport
Three-on-three overtime, the shootout, and the sudden-death marathons that decide playoff series. Same sport, three completely different endings.
Hockey has three ways of settling a tied game, and which one you get depends entirely on the time of year.
Regular season: three-on-three overtime
A tied game after sixty minutes goes to a short overtime played three skaters a side instead of five. Remove four skaters from a sheet of ice that size and the game becomes something else: enormous open space, odd-man rushes in both directions, and goalies facing far better chances than in regulation.
It is deliberately designed to produce a winner quickly, and it mostly does. Both teams already have a point banked by reaching overtime, which is the point of the loser point — it removes the incentive to sit back.
Tactically, three-on-three is about possession and changes. A team that turns the puck over in the neutral zone is usually defending a two-on-one three seconds later, and the most dangerous moment is often a bad line change rather than a bad shot.
Regular season: the shootout
If overtime settles nothing, a shootout does. Players take turns alone against the goalie; after the initial rounds, it goes to sudden death, and no player may shoot twice until everyone has gone.
The shootout is genuinely divisive. It is exciting, it guarantees the game ends on time, and it is also a skills competition deciding a team sport. The league's own rules acknowledge the tension: a shootout win counts as a win for points, but it is excluded from ROW (regulation plus overtime wins), which is a tie-break — so the standings quietly discount it.
The playoffs: sudden death, and nothing else
Everything above stops applying. Playoff overtime is:
- full strength — five a side, not three;
- twenty-minute periods, the same length as a regular period;
- sudden death — first goal wins;
- repeated as many times as it takes. There is no shootout, and there is no tie.
This is why playoff overtime games become folklore. Teams have played multiple extra periods; goaltenders have faced enormous shot counts; games have ended after midnight. The format is unchanged from a century ago and it is the best thing in the sport.
The difference in feel is total. Three-on-three overtime is a shooting gallery. Playoff overtime is two exhausted teams dumping the puck in and changing every thirty seconds, because one mistake ends the season.
Other leagues do it differently
- The PWHL uses a three-two-one-zero points system: three for a regulation win, two for an overtime or shootout win, one for an overtime or shootout loss. That is a cleaner answer to the same problem — every game is worth three points.
- The IIHF uses the same three-two-one-zero structure at international tournaments.
- College hockey has its own overtime arrangements, and a game decided in a shootout is still recorded nationally as a tie — which is why college records read W-L-T, and why our college scoreboards show a level score on a game marked "Final/SO".
What it means for reading a result
"4–3 (OT)" and "4–3 (SO)" and a plain "4–3" are three different results:
- 4–3 — two points for the winner, none for the loser.
- 4–3 (OT) — two points for the winner, one for the loser, and the winner gets credit toward ROW.
- 4–3 (SO) — two points and one point again, but the win does not count toward ROW, and the goal difference is recorded as a single goal rather than whatever the shootout score was.
Which is why our game cards say "Final/OT" and "Final/SO" rather than just "Final". It is not decoration — it changes the table.
See also: how NHL standings points work and our standings page, which explains the wild-card format and the full tie-break order.