Almost three-and-a-half years since its post-lockout introduction into the NHL, the shootout is in a state of suspended animation, floating somewhere between gimmick and game-decider, ornament and integral part of the league.

Like it or loathe it, the subject continues to be a source of conversation among coaches, according to Buffalo's Lindy Ruff.

The problem for many hockey watchers is the thrill is gone. The shootout, after four-on-four, somehow seems perfunctory: a wham-bam, too-quick coda that might delight the team that walks away with the spare point but not unduly distress the one that already has been compensated at the end of regulation. The prospect of a consolation prize certainly sucks the life out of some third periods when teams turn as risk-aversive as cash under the mattress.

"I think there are some cases where teams will just hang in there for loser points," Ruff says. "Sometimes you think, let's just get a point. The schedule makes it tough. If you're playing four (games) in six (nights) and you're on that fourth game with a back-to-back and the other team is a fresh team and you're hanging around the last five minutes, a loser point is pretty damn good. I know coaches talk about it."

(By the way, the NHL hates when any of its employees uses the term "loser point." It also hates "lockout," which accurately puts the onus on the owners, and prefers the generic "work stoppage" with the implication that then-NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow yelled "down tools!")

"I don't know what the answer is," Ruff says. "Some people are throwing good ideas around: three points for a regulation win, stuff like that. This is stuff that has to be looked at. I don't think we should just be happy with where we're at. Why shouldn't we look for more ways to make the game better?"

So maybe the NHL should try this answer: go big or go home.

To make the four-on-four and shootout be anything more than a nice parting gift to fans, the league has to raise the stakes considerably. Expunge "loser point" from the hockey vocabulary permanently. If the winner now must be clearly identified, then so, too, should the loser. If a team loses in overtime or the shootout, there should be no consolation prize. To borrow from Gertrude Stein -- no relation to Gil -- a loss is a loss is a loss.

Of course, while making the post-60 minutes truly meaningful, the NHL should have to expand the shootout to five from three skaters per side. Although traditionalists never will embrace it -- the home-run-derby-settling-a-baseball-game argument is not only for flat-earthers -- an increase in the number of shooters at least would expand the "team" dimension of the exercise, a sticking point for even fervent admirers of the shootout.

The trickle-down benefits would be obvious. The intensity of tie games would be amped in the third period, and four-on-four and shootouts would be inherently more dramatic with everything at stake. (NHL teams might actually bother spending a fair bit of time practicing both, rather than treating them as a bother.)

And the standings wouldn't look like the DaVinci Code. Instead of the current hieroglyphics of wins, losses, overtime losses, shootout losses and points, there would be wins and losses and games behind. While the traditional two points for a win would become an anachronism, this is one slice of NHL patrimony that could be sacrificed on the altar of clarity.

As On The Fly routinely mentions, the reason the NHL clings to the gray area of three-point games is that they artificially create playoff races that a black-and-white approach would squelch. Consider Tampa Bay, which woke up Tuesday a mere two points out of a playoff spot in a tie for 10th even though the Lightning should be in 14th place based on 11 wins in 32 games. A team that, at first glance, would appear to be one game under .500 has won barely a third of its games but is hanging around because three of its losses came in overtime and six more occurred in shootouts.

If the oft-pilloried Philadelphia Flyers were judged on wins and losses, they -- and not the Montreal Canadiens, who have scavenged eight points in overtime and shootouts -- would be in a playoff spot.

Anyway, instead of soccer-style three points for a win or the timid status quo, the NHL should rip away the security of a point for effort and let teams stand or fall on actual results in what is supposed to be a bottom-line industry.

If I had decided to jerk off instead, I probably wouldn't be paying child support...