Another big plus of the puck (flat bottomed transducers) is that fact you can clear the snow off the ice and place the transducer on the ice, pour some water on the ice to couple the transducer to the ice and take depth readings right through the ice. But the ice has to be of good quality (black ice).
I can easily shoot through over 5' of ice and have even marked fish through the ice.
This is a huge bonus when you are drilling through that much ice. Blind drilling is a big waste of time in these conditions. IMHO
You could probably do it with a regular skimmer transducer but you would need to drill down 1/2" or so and clean out the depression and use a ton more water to partially fill the hole.
It's all about efficiency for me. There are no maps of the lakes here and to drill hundreds of holes through 5' of ice would leave no time to actually fish.