That Time Of Year Again by tgirsch

That’s right, the NHL regular season has ended, and our loyal readers know what that means: it’s time for me (and probably Kevin) to bitch about the OTL point again. For prior OTL hatred, see here; here; and especially here and here and here.

As I’ve mentioned in those above posts, the NHL should act like a real sports league and have winning percentage be the primary determinant of a team’s record.

Let’s have a look at the before and after, shall we? (Below the fold)

This year, we’re only looking at the Eastern Conference, because as luck would have it, doing away with the OTL point wouldn’t change the Western Conference standings (although it came close in a couple of cases).

Current Standings, Eastern Conference:

Rk Team GP Pts
1 z-Montreal 82 104
2 y-Pittsburgh 82 102
3 y-Washington 82 94
4 x-New Jersey 82 99
5 x-NY Rangers 82 97
6 x-Philadelphia 82 95
7 x-Ottawa 82 94
8 x-Boston 82 94
9 Carolina 82 92
10 Buffalo 82 90
11 Florida 82 85
12 Toronto 82 83
13 NY Islanders 82 79
14 Atlanta 82 76
15 Tampa Bay 82 71

x = playoff berth; y = division champ; z = conference champ.

But what happens when we ditch points, and instead use winning percentage, with fewest regulation losses only factoring in as a tiebreaker?

Rk Team GP W RegL Pct
1 z-Montreal 82 47 25 0.573
2 y-Pittsburgh 82 47 27 0.573
3 y-Washington 82 43 31 0.524
4 x-New Jersey 82 46 29 0.561
5 x-Ottawa 82 43 31 0.524
6 x-Carolina 82 43 33 0.524
7 x-NY Rangers 82 42 27 0.512
8 x-Philadelphia 82 42 29 0.512
9 Boston 82 41 29 0.500
10 Buffalo 82 39 31 0.476
11 Florida 82 38 35 0.463
12 Toronto 82 36 35 0.439
13 NY Islanders 82 35 38 0.427
14 Atlanta 82 34 40 0.415
15 Tampa Bay 82 31 42 0.378

As you can see, if wins are what matters, then Carolina moves from being out of the playoffs to being a number six seed. They jump three places in the standings! Similarly, Ottawa goes from the seven seed to the five seed, moving up two places.

Now, I’d take it a step further: Instead of regulation losses, make the first tie-breaker the record in head-to-head competition, like most sports do. This would potentially impact seven of the eight playoff teams, since Montreal and Pittsburgh finished with 47 wins; Ottawa, Carolina, and Washington all finished the season with 43 wins; and New York (Rangers) and Philadelphia each finished with 42. But in this case, it turns out not to matter, because Montreal and Pittsburgh split their season series, as did Carolina and Washington, and Carolina and Ottawa; and the Rangers won their season series against Philadelphia — all the seedings would be the same.

This last change would also potentially impact two playoff teams in the West, since Colorado and Minnesota each finished with 44 wins, but again, Minnesota won the season series, so the seedings would be unchanged.

Note that my actual preference is this order: Winning percentage, head-to-head, division record (to resolve ties between two teams in the same division), conference record, fewest regulation losses. But since nobody seems to keep track of division/conference records that I can find, there’s no easy way to calculate that for the races where it matters.

The biggest takeaway from all of this is that Carolina ought to be a playoff team, and instead has an early tee time. Meanwhile, Boston, a .500 team, gets in.

Can’t we just kill the OTL point and be done with it?

April 8th, 2008 in NHL, Sports

3 Comments

digglahhhApril 8th, 2008

For this proposal to have any meat, regular season games have to be played to a win, and a real win, not one that ends in a skills competition after a half-hearted attempt at OT.

I never got over the institution of the shoot out, and OT losses shouldn’t earn points – of course they had to do that to compensate for the BS “overtime losses” that are really just losses at a skill competition.

If you go back to a simple 2/1 scoring system for win/tie, I anticipate a lot of the fluctuations would cease to be a problem. From a pure mathematical point of view, scoring is too low, and normal margins of victory too small to reward OT losses, in my opinion.

tgirschApril 8th, 2008

Recall the history of the OTL. The NHL was concerned (maybe rightly, maybe not) that there were too many ties. The thinking was that by awarding a point to each team, they might sell out to get the extra point, as opposed to before, when they risked not getting any points, and therefore played “cautious” in overtime. I’m on the fence about the shootout, but irrespective of how you feel about it, once you eliminate the possibility of a tie, then there’s no real reason to keep the OTL point around any more. And frankly, I don’t think it ever made sense in the first place.

Also much as I’m indifferent about the shootout, I don’t think it’s exactly fair to classify it as a “skills competition,” as there is indeed a head-to-head aspect to it. The biggest difference between it and penalty kicks in soccer is that in Hockey there’s not such a huge advantage for the shooter. (Although maybe the kicker’s advantage in soccer isn’t as great as I imagine it to be…)

Anyway, why bother with a points system at all? The NFL, MLB, and NBA don’t feel the need to have one. Why should the NHL?

digglahhhApril 9th, 2008

Well, no other sport is as likely to tie as hockey or go to OT as hockey (of the four majors), so that’s a big part of it.

It is a skills competition, it would be like settling a Lakers/Spurs game by having Kobe try to dunk on Duncan (he’d do it every time, btw :) ) or settling an extra inning baseball game by having Billy Wagner and Brad Lidge throw 100 mph fastballs down the middle while Wright, Beltran, and Delgado took on Utley, Howard, and Burrell in a home run derby…

The point is the game is decided in a fashion that is inconsistent with the manner in which it is normally played.

The reason this is done is because it is hard to score in these sports, and there’s always the possibility of a marathon OT. I’d rather split the difference though than settle the game in a manner misrepresentative of the sport as a whole.

Soccer is even lower scoring than hockey, perhaps penalty kicks are a necessary evil – but hockey seemed to do fine without it…

Admittedly, I’m not a big NHL guy, so my opinions should probably be taken with a grain of salt.