It was near the end of the 2008-09 season when then-St. Lawrence head coach Joe Marsh made a famous declaration. Following a 2-2 overtime tie and subsequent shootout “win” over Princeton in the third-place game of the ECAC Hockey Tournament, Marsh told assembled media in Albany, N.Y. that a center-ice game of canasta between himself and then-Princeton coach Guy Gadowsky would have been just as meaningful as the shootout.

In the eight-plus seasons since then a lot has changed in college hockey. Leagues have emerged, some others have contracted or vanished. And now there are three different ways that tie games are resolved among different conferences in league play. Compound that with additional formats for some in-season and postseason tournaments and it gets pretty messy.

Discussions will take place this summer toward moving to a consistent, nationwide overtime and potential shootout format across college hockey. With a nod to Joe Marsh, we present Nine Suggestions For College Hockey’s Overtime Format, Found On A Cocktail Napkin.

• Assistant coaches take to their cell phones. First to flip a verbal commit from the other team wins.
• Euchre (this submission postmarked from Houghton).
• Officials engage in lengthy review to determine which regulation goal was closest to being offside, then subtract it from that team’s total.
• Coaches bid on a retail product. The one closest to the product’s actual price without overbidding wins.
• Put your right wing in, put your right wing out. Do the Hokey Pokey and shake it all about.
• Game ends in a tie, players for both teams get participant ribbons.
• Team with free live stream of home games wins vs. team that charges, which wins vs. team with no stream. Quality of camerawork is the tiebreaker between teams with the same approach.
• Each team’s radio announcer gets three pucks delivered to the press box for a high-stakes duel in chuck-a-puck.
• Two words: Goalie fight.