University of Maine men’s hockey coach Tim Whitehead is tired of ties.

His Black Bears had seven ties this season.

So when the American Hockey Coaches Association holds its annual convention in Naples, Fla., April 20-24, he is going to propose they adopt the NHL system in which each team plays with one fewer skater in the five-minute overtime session.

There would be four skaters and a goalie instead of the standard five and one that they have in college hockey.

“There are too many ties,” said Whitehead. “You’d have a better chance of determining a winner this way. And we’re trying to create more offense and this would mean [the potential of] another goal in overtime. You’d have the best players on the ice more often.”

In the NHL, if two teams are tied after regulation, each team receives a point. The team that wins in OT earns an extra point. That was implemented to encourage teams to go for the win instead of sitting back and playing for the tie.

In NCAA hockey, two points are awarded to an overtime winner and the loser doesn’t get any points. If they are tied after the OT, they each receive a point.

Whitehead said he wouldn’t mind giving each team a point after regulation so they will be more motivated to go for the extra point in overtime.

“Whatever it takes to create more excitement,” said Whitehead.

He also said if they wanted to extend the OT session to eight minutes like Maine high school hockey, it wouldn’t bother him.

“We could play four-on-four [skaters] for the first five minutes and three-on-three for the final three minutes,” proposed Whitehead.

In the five seasons the NHL has used the four-on-four overtime session, there has been a winner 45 percent of the time. In the three previous years, with the system that is still being used in NCAA hockey, there was a winner just 28 percent of the time.

If the NCAA doesn’t want to implement the NHL overtime session, one of the six hockey leagues could experiment with it for up to two years if approved by the NCAA.

Hockey East used a shootout to determine a winner after OT during the 1994-95 and ’95-96 campaigns.

Whitehead said he also plans to push for the NHL’s officiating system which has two referees and two linesmen. NCAA hockey uses one referee and two linesmen, although the linesmen can call penalties if the referee isn’t in position to see them.

“The intent is to have better-officiated games and make sure we get the calls right, especially on the goals,” said Whitehead. “It’s difficult for one referee to be at one goalmouth and then get all the way down to the other goalmouth following a transition play.”

The NCAA crackdown requiring the refs to call the game tighter also makes life more difficult for one referee, said Whitehead.

He also likes the idea of giving “new officials a chance to break into the league. You could pair a new referee with a veteran. We need good, young officials.”

Cronin will replace Crowder

Greg Cronin, who was an assistant coach at the University of Maine on two different occasions and was the interim head coach for 36 games, will be named the new head coach at Northeastern University, according to published reports.

He will replace another former Maine assistant, Bruce Crowder, who didn’t have his contract renewed after nine seasons.

Cronin, a former Colby College player and assistant, is coaching the Bridgeport Sound Tigers of the AHL.

Cronin went 21-13-2 as the head coach at Maine while the late Shawn Walsh was serving a one-year suspension spanning parts of two seasons for NCAA violations.

Cronin was at Maine from 1988-90 and from ’93-96.