What the PWHL Got Right

The Professional Women’s Hockey League started their season this week, including the Minnesota team. After winning two games, including their home opener, it’s easy to celebrate for them. The State of Hockey celebrates any time that they can help grow the game. But the nice thing about a new league is the ability to try out rule changes, giving a glimpse at what the NHL could be doing differently. And the PWHL has a few of those.

Scoring System

The coolest thing about the PWHL rules is how they give points after each game. In the NHL, the winning team gets 2 no matter what. And if a team takes it to overtime/a shootout and loses, they get 1. Otherwise, no point for you.

But what if a league expanded this concept expanded a little bit more?

The PWHL rewards 3 points for a regulation win, 2 points for an overtime or shootout win, 1 point for an overtime/shootout loss, and 0 points for a regulation loss. This makes things a little bit different for everyone because it incentivizes winning during regulation. 

How many hockey games move into the overtime period after both teams seem to have unconsciously agreed to take things to overtime? Once NHL teams hit overtime, they know that they’ll get at least one point. But what if there was an extra point for a team? Most teams would be hungry to add that third point to their season standings. It might also help cancel a few overtime periods for games. A little bit of added excitement at the end of a game? Sign me up. At that point, it would end up with 3 points for the winner and none for the loser. What a good feeling that would be, especially at home.

Short-Handed Goals

This is something that could help the Minnesota Wild quite a bit if the Deweys keep getting on their horses and trying to score short-handed. Remember last year when little ‘ole Connor Dewar was known around the NHL for taking advantage and scoring short-handed? What if that negated the penalty?

The idea is that if a team manages to score a short-handed goal, then that would cancel out their penalty. It is sort of the opposite of canceling the rest of a penalty if a power play scores. If nothing else, it makes it more worthwhile to attempt a short-handed goal. There are plenty of times that fans can almost read a hockey player’s mind as they try to decide versus pushing for a short-handed goal or just killing more penalty time. Cancelling out the penalty might be that deciding factor.

Shootouts

What if Phone Booth Freddy could take more than one of the shootout chances? Could he manage to spread his magic out more than just the one shot? With PWHL rules, that is a possibility. In the PWHL, players can take more than one turn at the shootout as long as five rounds are done. 

In the NHL, a player cannot take a second shot until every eligible player on the team has taken a shot. That’s quite a bit different. Imagine having to go through all four lines and all three defensive pairings before getting Phone Booth Freddy back out there. Now imagine that he can pot another goal in the sixth spot and any spot beyond that. Then Freddy Gaudreau would finally get his due. (Team Freddy all the way here).

PWHL vs. NHL

The world finally has a cohesive professional women’s hockey league that is not only paying women to play hockey as a career but is changing the rules to potentially make it more interesting. Could a change be ahead for the NHL? With Gary Bettman? Probably not. But it’ll still be interesting to see how these play out in the next few seasons for the PWHL.