No, I’m not saying let’s have a dozen goals every night. I don’t want to walk away after spending almost three hours of my time, or after spending a lot of my money after attending a game only to have it end in a tie. Of my favorite games of all time was a Rangers/Sabres game that ended in a 2-1 OT victory for the Sabres that went scoreless for the first two and a half periods. There doesn’t have to be a lot of scoring, just a lot of scoring opportunities and a clear cut winner at the end of each game.
I would say do it like the playoffs, full 20 min periods until someone scores. I’m not a fan of having post season rules be different than regular season rules, since it was those regular season rules that got you in the playoffs, but after an extra full OT or 2 in playoff games, the play gets sloppy. Players are so fatigued, the quality of the game starts to diminish and the winner a lot of the time ends up to be the team that didn’t make the first careless mistake, not the team who made a spectacular play.
While like I said I don’t necessarily care for having different sets of rules, I don’t really see an issue with the shootout. I can’t stand soccer, but like the rest of America I mildly care about it once every four years during the World Cup, don’t they use a shootout to decide winners in the World Cup after being tied forever?