In fact, the experience of the NHL shows exaxtly why penalties, from time to time, HAVE to decide the outcome of games; because if officials don’t allow it to happen when it’s merited, the quality of play will decline.
Starting in the early 90s but really getting going in the later part of the decade, less talented NHL teams began to engage in more and more holding, hooking and other illegal plays in an effort to slow down faster, more talented teams, figuring that taking more penalties might not be a bad tradeoff. The result was that referees who called the penalties appropriately came under fire for “allowing penalties to decide the game.” A team would lose 5-3 after giving up three power play goals and people who complain that the refs had decided it; the fact that the losing team had committed eleven minor penalties was blamed on the REFS, not the losing team.
So, over time, what happened was that referees started spacing penalties out, allocating them more or less evenly to either side. Unless a penalty was particularly egregious - and sometimes, even if it was - refs would not allow one team to get substantially more power plays than the other. If one team had had two or three more power plays, the other team would get a pass on almost any rule violation, which the team with more power plays would be called on the next available penalty.
The result, as you would expect, is that illegal play ballooned. By the early part of this decade, the rules against hooking and holding had effectively been removed from NHL hockey; almost any degree of interference was permitted, including hooking men from behind, attacking the upper body with the stick, pinning men to the ice, holding the arms, tripping, and cross-checking. Pretty much all interference was allowed except for stick-to-the-head hits. Of course, all NHL players had no choice but to engage in non-stop interference, since everyone else was doing it. Penalties were awarded in complete disregard for who had committed penalties, and instead were handed out based on whose turn it was.
The result was a dramatic reduction in the quality of play. Skilled, fast play was quickly squeezed out of the game, and goal scoring plummeted. In 2003-04, no NHL player scored more than 41 goals, a total that 20 years earlier wouldn’t have led most teams. All play became defensive, and hideously boring. So by not allowing PENALTIES to determine the outcome of games, the league allowed breaking the rules to not only determine the outcome of games, but effectively wreck the quality of play.
