Extra-session drama is a glorious playoff tradition

	Vanquished warrior: One momentary lapse in double OT was all it took to bring down the valiant Roberto Luongo. AP
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Memo to the NHL powers that be: Please don't touch overtime.

Get rid of other things first -- like the thoroughly unbalanced schedule that keeps Sidney Crosby out of Edmonton and Joe Thornton out of Boston two out of every three years.

Take away those silly between-periods promotions that limit the zamboni's time to clean the ice and leave the puck bouncing on Swiss cheese at the end of each period.

Get rid of the excess on the goalie pads, so the guy with the advantage isn't wearing mittens and sleeping bags while shooters are forced to aim for a pinhead.

You can even get rid of shootouts entirely. I may be in the minority here, but it reminds me of a carnival game, sort of like the NBA using H-O-R-S-E to choose a winner or baseball relying on a home-run derby.

But please, please don't touch overtime.

As one who follows four major sports and dozens of others that are usually relegated to channel 485 on my cable system, I can't think of anything more exciting than Stanley Cup overtime. Yes, it can keep you from sleeping once you get to periods six and seven, but there is drama is every shift, potential that is often wrenched in disappointment and, sometimes, the unlikeliest of heroes.

For sure, there is strategy. That guy on the end of the bench is a gamble. He's a defensive liability, but he's also fresh. Petr Klima sat on the end of the Oilers bench in Game 1 of the 1990 Stanley Cup Final in overheated Boston Garden. The game lasted into what felt like the 27th period although it was really only the sixth. Klima couldn't spell his goaltender's name because he never played on the same end of the rink, but he was swift, and after resting for most of the third period as well as all of the first two OTs, he was practically on propellers while everyone else skated on glue-bottomed logs. Klima needed one shift to settle the drama.

Not every game-winner is pretty. In the 1987 Patrick Division semifinal, Pat LaFontaine beat the Capitals in the middle of the night with a screen shot that looked like it carried through about 20 players, even though there were only half as many dragging themselves around the ice in that fourth OT.

In the 2000 Eastern Conference semifinals, Keith Primeau fired a quintuple-OT shot against the Penguins that moved so oddly it had to be a curveball, but it was the difference in the Flyers' 2-1 win.

But that's how OTs are. One lapse in concentration can undo more than 80, 100, 120 minutes of brilliance in a hiccup. Look at what happened to Vancouver's Roberto Luongo on Thursday night. He hadn't let in a bad goal since grade school, but after Anaheim's Rob Niedermayer leveled Jannik Hansen, Luongo appeared to be pointing at the overhead video screen, as if to alert an official about the infraction he could have called. Surely the puck was about to head out of the zone, and the gesture might be worth ... oops.

The puck was, in fact, still in the zone, thanks to older brother Scott Niedermayer, who slid a shot along the ice that most grade-schoolers could have stopped. But Luongo hadn't quite reset himself after making his gesture, and the puck slid past his left skate, into an open corner of the net before he managed to react. You could hardly blame Luongo, since the Ducks had outshot his Canucks, 63-27. The laws of attrition, concentration and serendipity can be both cruel and elating in playoff OT, but that's part of the fun and part of the lore.

If you're worried about teams that have just survived a multiple-period OT game having a competitive disadvantage, just make sure there are two off-days in between series. If the long games take place during an ongoing series, both teams will have to adapt to the same number of extra mileage on their tires.

There has been talk about ways to shorten OT games -- play four-on-four after a period; go to a shootout after two periods; flip hockey cards after three periods. It all seems like the same thing to me. OT is a tradition as glorious as the Stanley Cup itself. Yes, the NHL needs to find ways to market and to modernize, but changing overtime sounds too much like playing with the steak rather than the sizzle. Hey, it's May. Anyone for steak?