Tonight the Coyotes (22-16-9) play the Devils (20-18-11). The Devils sit just a couple points out of the playoffs, so they are really a similar team to the Coyotes in terms of the standings and the importance of this game.

Look for Mike Smith to start for the fourth time this week, as he’s coming off of a shutout and has looked good in the last two games.

There is no truth to the rumor that 106 year old Jaromir Jagr’s great-grandson Steve Jagr will be suiting up for the Devils tonight. Jagr does, however, have 38 points in 49 games. A stat that is quite amazing when you consider the context: he is actually 41 years old and playing against guys literally half his age, and there are only 11 players in the whole league who average 1 point per game this year.

-----


One thing I thought about today, while looking at the team’s respective records, is just how stupid and counter-intuitive the way the NHL keeps track of its standings is. Like anyone who has watched sports their whole life, I am conditioned to glance at standings and extrapolate the quality of a given team based on their proximity to having a .500 record.

This works for every other sport, and it used work with hockey, but, unfortunately, with the NHL and their crazy accounting, trying to get a sense of a given team’s quality from the standings is basically impossible.

The Coyotes, for example, if you just glance at their record, appear to be 6 games over .500, which should mean they are a really good team, and yet, that isn’t the case. In the NHL almost everyone is over .500. In reality, the Coyote’s record is 22-25 and they are 3 games below even. If this was an accurate way to understand the standings, then I would be fine with it. But it’s not accurate at all, since some of the wins came in shootouts, and some of the games were worth a different amount of points than others etc.

The NHL has their point rewards system structured in such a way as to encourage scores to be tied at the end of regulation. If, for example, the score is close near the end of the third period the game almost always goes to overtime because getting even 1 point is a better strategy than risking that point to prevent your opponent from gaining it (and this is especially true for out-of conference games where there is no incentive to prevent the other team from gaining an extra point).

This leads to more games going to overtime than would occur if the NHL sensibly rewarded the same amount of points for every game. (As in, it’s ridiculous for some games to reward a combined 3 points and other just 2). This, combined with the fact that shootouts prove nothing, alters the standings so much that they are close to meaningless.

Add to this the consideration that when a game goes to overtime the entire way the sport is played changes (skaters are removed, incentives to play defense are removed, and eventually a breakaway contest is held) overtime results are not reliable indicators of a team’s overall quality or success. Therefore, a team’s record, as reported daily in the standings printed league wide, is not actually as indicative of its overall quality, or even who the best teams are.

Further complicating this is the fact that while the numbers in the last column are loses, they aren’t loses in the same way as regulation losses because a) they are worth a point in the standings and b) because of the rules and incentives (or lack there of) in overtime, they aren’t really even losses because overtime and shootouts are essentially a coin-flip whose results have no bearing on a team’s actual abilities or skill level.

This means that the win column listed in the standings is also fraudulent. This is because there is no separate column for overtime wins. Wins which are based on nothing but a coin flip for the same reason that losses in overtime don’t really matter (they matter in the standings of course, don’t get me wrong, but they are not indicative of a team’s overall quality.)

For a good example of how the whole shoot-out/overtime thing screws with the standings, consider this: At one point this year the Red Wings had lost 9 consecutive shootouts. This is despite being able to use Zetterberg and Datsyk on a regular basis. The Maple Leafs on the other hand, lead the league with 9 shoot-out wins and are subsequently 3 points up in the standings on Detroit, despite having recently won their first regulation game since early November. Does anyone actually think the Leafs have the better team than Detroit?

And all of these problems don’t even take into account that in the NHL, you can miss the playoffs even if you have more points than another team in your Conference. If you look closely at the Eastern Conference standings – thanks in part to Pittsburgh destroying their division – this might actually happen. Ottawa could, for example, miss the playoffs even if the Flyers have less points, should the Flyers happen to be the third best team in their division.

To sum up: the standings are not indicative of who are actually the best teams; they are skewed wildly by shootouts, by the lack of incentives to win in regulation, and by the fact that some games are not worth as much as others and teams with less overall points can miss the playoffs at the expense of worse teams. Oh, and you have to be a pretty dedicated hockey fan to even understand them in the first place.

The NHL needs to do something about this, as it’s a joke and a league embarrassment.

Adding to the stupidity and convolutedness of the whole problem is how simple the solution is:

1) All games are worth 2 points.

2) Before going to a shootout, overtime is 5 on 5 and ten minutes. Since shootouts are so random, teams will try to win it in regulation and the shootout will be held less often and thus will be more interesting.

3) Instead of having 4 divisions, the NHL should have 2 conferences where each team plays teams in their conference the same amount of times. These teams are then ranked 1-8 based on accumulated points only. If travel complications arise, just have teams play consecutive games in the same building, baseball style.

It’s so uncomplicated and easy to fix that you can be sure they never will.


And hey – what happened to the “New NHL” ? Because hooking and interference are back big time.


Thanks for Reading. @Coyotes1234

Join the Discussion: » 11 Comments » Post New Comment

» I am Just Curious If This Works

» NHL At Least Tries to do the Right Thing

» The NHL Cannot Remain Apolitical and Must Show Leadership

» Time for a New Coach to Go Along with the New G.M

» Coyotes Eliminated Following Severe Beating