The NHL regular season is over, so it’s time to ask one of the essential questions of the 2015-16 campaign:

Did 3-on-3 overtime successfully kill the shootout?

No. But it significantly wounded it.

The final numbers for the NHL show that the percentage of overtime games that ended before the shootout jumped from the 4-on-4 format in the previous season. Take a look:

View photos NHL More

So that’s roughly 61.1 percent of overtime games that ended in the 3-on-3, vs. 44.8 percent of overtime games that ended in the 4-on-4 in the previous season.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the 3-on-3 overtime became less effective in preventing shootouts as the season went on.

[Join a Yahoo Daily Fantasy Hockey contest today]

After 171 overtime games this season, via ESPN, 109 of them were decided in the 3-on-3 – that’s 63.7 percent, or slightly higher than what we finished with. This happened because teams gradually started playing more conservatively in overtime, so as not to give their opponents a golden chance to win on a turnover or odd-man rush. This also happened because some teams know their chances are slightly better in the shootout and the 3-on-3, and they want to go to there.

(Like the Florida Panthers, for example, who has 10 of their 16 overtime games go to the shootout, where they were 7-3. Your Atlantic Division champions!)

How does it all stack up with the OT experiments in the American Hockey League, you ask?

Keep in mind that the AHL has had three different kinds of overtime in the last three seasons: 4-on-4 for five minutes, and then a shootout; 4-on-4 for four minutes, and then 3-on-3 for the rest of a seven-minute overtime; and then 3-on-3 for five minutes this season.

View photos AHL More

* Keep in mind those 2015-16 numbers are through Wednesday night’s games, as the AHL finishes up its regular season this weekend.

As you can see, the 3-on-3 was slightly more effective in the AHL, as it had 247 overtime games (less than in the NHL) with 163 decided in the 3-on-3. And oddly enough, those numbers actually improved as the season went on: Through 394 games this season, the AHL saw 41.4 percent of its overtime game end in a shootout.

So what did we learn in Year 1 of the 3-on-3 OT in the NHL?

1. It reduces shootouts. Even as teams took their foot off the accelerator and played more conservatively, you still ended up with less than 40 percent of overtime games ending in a skills competition. What this means for next season, who knows?

Story continues