Optical Burst Switching (OBS) networks depend on contention resolution strategies to reach reasonable bandwidth utilization efficiency. However, these strategies increase both the complexity and cost of OBS core nodes. Recent research efforts have suggested that contention minimization strategies based on flexible and optimized burst scheduling at the ingress nodes, exploiting their inexpensive electronic buffers, can assist in the task of relaxing the hardware requirements of the network core nodes. This paper assesses the effectiveness of these contention minimization strategies and the impact of key network and traffic parameters, such as the maximum tolerable burst delay at the ingress nodes, average offered traffic load, number of wavelengths per link, average burst hop count, and node connectivity degree.