Why is it two points for a win, one for an overtime loss, and none for a regulation loss, instead of just going by won-loss percentages? I realize that it’s difficult to figure credit for an OL into percentage terms, but why should a team get any credit in the standings anyway for losing in overtime as opposed to losing in regulation?
How common is this in other sports (i.e., outside the US, I guess)? Is the use of won-loss percentages in fact the unusual method?
It’s a holdover from when regular season games could end in a tie, with both teams earning 1 point each. I don’t think there’s a good reason to keep it around, myself.
Can’t answer your last question.
Giving the outside the US-perspective here.
I’ve never heard of measuring standings in percentages in any sport. And that goes for soccer (3 points for win, 1 for draw), Swedish Hockey (same as in NHL) and handball (2, 1).
In what sports do you measure in percentages?
The theory is that during overtime both teams have already captured one point, they can then be more aggressive in going after the second point by winning in overtime. Losing in overtime still gives the loser what it would have had if the game simply ended in a tie.
The introduction of the shootout made this already silly idea into something completely pointless. A team can play cautiously during OT to get to a shootout. The one point format should be dropped and points given to the winner only. Keep the shootout, tinker with OT, or whatever, but if the game can’t end in a tie anymore that one point does not make much sense. Dropping the one point would mean going to a straight win/loss percentage, although points would probably still be used just for tradition.
Baseball, basketball, and American football are the big ones, but nearly all US sports leagues use W-L percentages. I wondered whether we might be an outlier in that respect, and I appreciate your perspective.
As an additional point of comparison, do you know how European basketball leagues measure standings?
The other alternative is to award 3 points, not 2, for regulation wins. [Verbose language warning] Imagine that you are chasing 2 other teams for the final playoff spot, and you are 3 points behind them both with 2 games to play (for everyone). The teams ahead of you have a home-and-home with each other, and lo a behold both games go into OT, with the same team winning both games. Your team wins its final two, but is still out of a playoff spot because you only got 4 points for your two wins while the “loser” still got his 2 for the OT losses they “suffered”. An OT game is generally bad news for the other teams fighting them for a playoff spot. This way every game is worth 3 points no matter whether it is split 3-0, or 2-1.
Standings in baseball are determined by winning percentage and nothing else. If two teams are tied for one playoff spot with the same winning percentage (which in a season that long usually means identical records) they have to play a playoff game. There’s no tiebreaking statistic if a playoff spot is at stake.
This is interesting because in the paper and such, standings are always presented as “Games behind,” e.g. the number of games Team B would have to beat Team A to catch up:
London 81-63 .563 -
Berlin 78-66 .542 3.0
Berlin will invariably be shown as being “3 games behind” but what actually makes them behind is winning percentage. If you’re ever in North America and want to win a bar bet, write this down and ask a baseball fan who’s in first place:
Team A 12-11
Team B 13-7
Team C 2-1
Most fans will go for Team B. In fact, Team C is in first place.
No. Baseball uses a point system for standings. If the Dodgers are 6-4 (60% wins) and the Padres are 5-3 (62.5% wins), due to some rainouts that may be made up later, they are tied. Percentage might be displayed in the paper but it doesn’t affect who’s in first.
(On preview, RickJay contradicts what I have been told and “known” all my life. I am confuzzled, but I’ll bet he’s right.)
In points. Here’s a linkfor the Icelandic 1.st league in Basketball and not a percentage in sight, and from what I remember it’s the same in the Swedish league.
I see your point, but my preference is just to drop the one point for the OL. In general, I think the NHL needs to simplify a few things, another example is getting rid of the goalie trapezoid thing. Or take intermissions back down to a simple round 15 minutes from the time the last player is off the ice. Or stop cleaning the ice before shootouts. These things make the game confusing for the newcomer, or delay the flow of the game.
As to this - sorry to double post - it’s better than the current system but it doesn’t actually eliminate the problem. It’s still possible for Team A to win fewer and lose more games than Team B and still finish ahead of them.
Under the current system this happens every year; last year Carolina missed the playoffs despite winning more games than THREE teams that finished “ahead” of them, and the year before Montreal and Colorado both finished out while a team with fewer wins finished in. In 2005-2006, both Vancouver and LA finished out of the playoffs with more wins than Edmonton; even if you awarded three points for a win they still would have finished out of the playoffs.
I don’t really understand why they make it as complicated as they do. There should be wins and losses and that’s it.
While I’m quite sure I am, now I can’t find the cite. So I’m writing MLB to make sure.
Well, not entirely. Head-to-head record counts as a tiebreaker, then divisional record, then, I think, common opponents. Of course, that’s only if the loser of the tie will still get the wild card.
Because of the inherent quasi-randomness of the shootout round (5 min OT not quite so much). In the old days before tiebreakers, if you tie, you get a point/they get a point. They just retained the “automatic one point if you are tied at the end of regulation” and gave the OT winner an extra point. Hockey OT counts for an extra half-game, thus introducing an imbalance into the standings.
Imagine if they did this in any other sport, the NFL say-go to OT and all of a sudden the game counts for more than it did if decided in regulation. The pundits would go nuts, as well they should; the NHL assumes that “it will all balance out” in an 82-game season more than it would in a 16 game system, but the bias is still there. Yeah a team might still get more wins and still lose out to another club, but this “all games count as 3 points” is a definite improvement. And giving the automatic point for a reg. tie is fairer IMHO than not giving them anything at all if they lose in the OT/shootout.
Now, as far as the postseason is concerned, just go to 4-on-4 for the 2nd and succeeding OTs, open up the ice and pretty much end these 4 OT period marathons we seem to get almost every postseason.