Just one more point...

When NHL commissioner Gary Bettman addressed the Board of Governors in Florida recently, a number of suggestions for improving the "on-ice product" were tossed around.

Some of the ideas, such as moving the blue lines, removing the red line and tightening the restrictions on goaltenders' equipment, have been discussed at length in the media.

However, one of the proposals -- to award three points for a win -- has gone largely ignored.

Why three points for a win? Let's look at the problems that the NHL is trying to address. There's a perception that fans (and, perhaps more importantly, potential fans) want to see more scoring. It could be argued that they really want to see more offense, with more shots on goal, wherever those shots may end up.

Also, in a similar vein, fans want to see both teams trying to win the game, rather than settling for a tie. The two issues are tied together to some extent: with a greater incentive to win, both teams should be more motivated to score a goal when the game is tied. Here's the crux of the matter: with three points at stake, winning will be more important than not losing.

The transition from two points to three has worked well in soccer, a sport that has much in common with hockey. By the early 1980s, soccer in many countries was being stifled by defensive tactics. In league competitions, where there's no overtime at the end of a tied game, too many coaches were encouraging their teams to "play for a draw (tie)", especially when playing away from home. "Win the home games, draw the away games, and we'll do OK" was the typical approach, with the result that most games only had one team that was trying to win.

In 1981, the English league adopted a three-point system for the first time, in an attempt to encourage teams to break out from this tedium. The results, although hardly spectacular, were clearly positive. In the First Division (equivalent to today's Premiership), in the first five seasons following the rule change, the number of wins increased by six percent, and goal scoring was up by four percent, compared with the previous five seasons. It was broadly agreed that the game had become more entertaining to watch.

The new rule was gradually adopted in other countries. After a particularly turgid World Cup in 1990, the worldwide governing body FIFA finally introduced it at the 1994 tournament in the USA, where there was a lot of skepticism about the commercial viability of soccer in a crowded media market.

In the three World Cup tournaments that have taken place under the three-point rule, the proportionate number of wins in the first round (the only stage of the tournament that is league-based) is just 1 per cent higher than in the three previous tournaments, but goal scoring has risen by a healthy seven percent.

Would this work in the NHL? Why not? Although some journalists and NHL GMs have dismissed the idea, none of them seem to have managed to come up with reasoned arguments against it. The best they can do, as far as I'm aware, is to cry "tradition."

The suggestion is that three points should only be awarded for a regulation win, with an overtime win still only worth two points. But why? Surely the intensity level would drop in overtime -- this is exactly the problem that the NHL addressed in 1999 when introducing four-on-four hockey in overtime, and handing out a point for an overtime loss. Those changes, which have been largely successful, although they still have a whiff of gimmickry about them, may have been unnecessary if the three-point rule had been adopted instead. Now, with the nightmarish prospect of a strike looming on the horizon, and public interest on the wane, it's time to get it right.