There will be no changes to college hockey's overtime this season after all.
The NCAA Men's and Women's Ice Hockey Rules Committee tabled its own recommendation that college hockey move to 4-on-4 overtimes across the board in all conferences.
"As part of the rules process, the committee has been gathering input from our membership on all of our proposals, including this issue," committee chair and Michigan State coach Tom Anastos said in a statement. "While there remains support for some change to our current system, the committee believes that the best course of action at this time is to pause for at least another season to allow for more dialogue, examination and consideration to occur."
Last month, the Committee announced plans to forward universal 4-on-4 play to the Oversight Panel, but the Committee withdrew the proposal before Wednesday's meeting.
The coaching body-on the men's and women's sides-were strongly against any changes to overtime.
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The NCAA release says it will be considered again in the future.
That means all leagues will continue playing a five-minute, 5-on-5 overtime.
The NCAA will continue to allow leagues to play 3-on-3 overtimes after the five-minute, 5-on-5 sessions for league points only (the games would be counted as ties for NCAA-tournament selection purposes).
The National Collegiate Hockey Conference was the only league in the country that used the 3-on-3 last season. The NCHC also utilized a sudden-death shootout to break ties if nobody scored during the 3-on-3s.
Of the 96 NCHC regular-season games last season, only six went to 3-on-3 overtimes and just one to a shootout.
Overtimes have become a hot topic with the high number of ties in all levels of hockey.
Last month, Anastos said: "In our review of the game, it is clear that goal scoring is continuing to trend down. After a thorough discussion of the overtime process, and seeing the success experienced by the National Hockey League and others using four-on-four, we believe this change will be a positive step for NCAA hockey. Our committee is charged with finding a balance in making changes that we believe will have a positive impact on the game, yet respect the traditions of the sport. We feel the changes we have adopted meet those objectives and will enhance our brand of hockey."
If overtimes changed, the mathematical formula used to pick the 16-team NCAA tournament field also would have change. Overtime wins would have become less valued than those in regulation and overtime losses wouldn't have hurt teams as much.
