Problem with that is you still get both teams turtling the last 5 minutes of regulation to protect that point. I don’t mind rewarding a team that gets to OT, but I do mind wasting those 5 minutes with puck handling drills disguised as hockey.
There’s nothing wrong with ties during a regular season. The point is to evaluate the best teams over the course of a season. There’s a big difference between a team with 50 wins, with all of those wins coming in regulation, than a team with 50 wins with 10 of those wins coming in OT.
I think part of the problem there is that some teams aren’t just protecting the point. They’re inferior teams looking to reach the OT period and then play through it to get to the shootout where they might stand a chance of winning. The Devils played that to perfection in 2011-12, riding all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals even though they wouldn’t have even been a playoff team without the current OT and shootout rules in place (they were 12-4 in shootouts that year).