in NHL Articles

Wings were best team

If the National Hockey League insists on keeping the shootout next season, will they also work on the league’s points system? Currently two points are awarded to a team for a win, and one point is awarded to a team for an overtime loss or a shootout loss.

That system rewards teams for losing. In theory, a team could lose every single game of the season in overtime, and finish with a respectable 82 points. In fact, the Edmonton Oilers won’t finish with a winning record this season, yet will end up with over 90 points.

Was it better back when the league still allowed tie games? No, because back then you had to navigate columns of wins, losses, ties, and overtime losses. Too complicated, and too misleading. When all your wins are piled into one column, and your non-winning results are spread out over the rest of the page, most of the league looks competitive.

What’s the solution? It’s actually rather simple. If you win the game, you get a notch in the win column. If you lose the game (in regulation time, in overtime, or in the shootout) you get a notch in the loss column. Two kinds of results, two columns. That eliminates the debate on whether wins should be worth two points or three points in the standings, or whether overtime and shootout losses should get you a single point.

In fact, let’s remove the points column from the standings altogether. The NBA doesn’t use points in their standings. Neither does the NFL or Major League Baseball. Those leagues base their standings on winning percentages and, in the cases of basketball and baseball, use a ‘games behind’ column to rank the teams in the division groupings.

But hasn’t the NHL always used points to rank their teams, and wouldn’t this solution do away with some history? Who cares. With the way the league has tinkered with their system over the past decade the final tallies have become practically meaningless. As a bonus, we’d no longer have to hear people going on about ‘games in hand’, and how one team is ahead of another in points, but has played a bunch more games.

And it just doesn’t sit right when you see teams this late in the season getting beat in overtime or the shootout, but still picking up a potentially-crucial point in the standings. A team that needs a single point to clinch a playoff spot or a division title can grind their way to a regulation tie, and then get beat in overtime and get rewarded with that point.

Now knowing the NHL, they’ll probably toss out an even more complicated system for consideration, like three points for a regulation win, two points for an OT or shootout win, one point for an OT or shootout loss, and zero points for a regulation loss. Imagine the standings then - you’d strain your eyes before you reached the final column.

Would using the NBA/MLB system make a difference in the standings this season? In the Eastern Conference the New York Rangers would be in a much tighter battle with the Philadelphia Flyers and the New Jersey Devils for the Atlantic Division crown, while the Tampa Bay Lightning would have a bit more breathing room as the eighth seed.

The differences would be bigger out in the Western Conference, where the Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks would be swapping positions on their respective sides of the postseason cutoff line. In fact, the Los Angeles Kings would also be in a better position to make the playoffs, and the Minnesota Wild wouldn’t be so far behind them.

So you’d think that any team jobbed out of a higher standing this year would be in favor of a change in the system for next season. A change as drastic as getting rid of the points, as sensible as it might be? That’s probably not in the cards, but the NHL has tried a plethora of new things since the lockout. Revamping their standings to get in line with the rest of the major sports leagues might be yet another thing they elect to try out.

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