Will NHL coaches suck the fun out of 3-on-3 OT?

In a perfect world, the NHL would offer a freewheeling offensive game with a multitude of chances on every shift and ridiculous pace, if not a dozen goals on the board.

But this world isn’t perfect. It has coaches. And coaches hate fun.

Which brings us to the inevitable question about the 3-on-3 overtime format that the League is adopting this season: Are coaches going to find a way to suck the fun out of it by slowing the pace and implementing systems to turn it into five minutes of skating in quicksand?

“No. It’s not possible to coach the excitement out of it,” said Justin Williams of the Washington Capitals.

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“You might have some coaches who put a couple defensemen out there, but regardless, everyone can skate. Everyone can score. I sense it being pretty interesting to watch.”

But as Bob McKenzie of TSN found in his intriguing look at the new gimmick, some NHL executives are anticipating that coaches will find a way:

"Don't kid yourself," an NHL general manager told me on the eve of the 2015-16 regular season, "the (NHL) coaches will have this dummied down in no time."

Really? "Give us some time," an NHL head coach added, "and we'll make three-on-three as boring as four-on-four had become."

They're probably right. We would be foolish to think otherwise. Give 30 NHL coaching staffs the incentive to break down every aspect of what superficially looks like just five minutes or less of fun hockey and they're bound to find way to organize it, execute it and, ultimately, stifle it.

"The Fun Police," the unnamed NHL GM added, "are on the case."

(An aside: Had the 4-on-4 become boring? Especially in comparison with the gimmick that followed it?)

The players we’ve spoken to line up with Williams: They believe the chaos of the 3-on-3 can’t be controlled, because one bad bounce or mistimed pass means a odd-man-rush the other way. The open ice makes any number of systems ineffective.

As Justin Bourne said, safe is death:

The 3-on-3 has three standards to meet in its first year of existence: Prevention of the shootout; end games in unpredictable ways; and provide a chance to the NHL’s top offensive talents to make magic happen in ways they couldn’t in the 4-on-4.

I’m more confident that it’ll score that hat trick than that coaches will be able to put a damper on it.

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