Dear National Hockey League,
I have been a hockey fan since childhood. The NHL playoffs are my favorite thing on TV, especially now that The Good Place is over. So please know that I say this with a heart full of love.
Your regular season standings are an abomination.
Alas, this gave teams an incentive to play for the tie. I have no qualm with that, but ties apparently leave too many fans unsatisfied.
So in 1999, you introduced a new rule: the loser point. Now, simply making it to overtime—even if you went on to lose—guaranteed you 1 point. Since a tie now offered no extra benefit, this encouraged teams to play aggressively for the win.
A little clunky. But it worked.
That is, until you kept tinkering. Still dissatisfied with ties, in 2006 you eliminated them altogether. Any game that was tied after overtime would finish in a winner-take-all shootout.
Yet – and here is where the madness begins – you kept the loser point.
Do you see the error?
You healed the broken arm, and kept on the sling. You replaced the broken lamp, then transferred the duct tape onto the new one. You brought out chips and dip to tide us over until dinner, and now the pizza is here, and you’re still forcing tortillas into our overstuffed mouths.
In today’s league, every game ends with a winner and a loser. Yet the unwieldy standings list four types of outcomes: wins (2 points), losses (0), overtime losses (1), and shootout losses (1).
Can anyone ponder this monstrous inelegance without grinding their teeth into a chalky paste?
There’s a simple and obvious solution: eliminate the loser point. That said, Micah Blake McCurdy, to whom I tend to defer on such matters, argues that this would add too much randomness to the standings (since a shootout is little better than a coin flip). He favors treating any game that goes to overtime like a tie: each team gets 1 point, win or lose.
Either way is fine by me.
Please, NHL. You’re better than this.
Best,
Ben
I think you mixed up the images (I see three times hockey-5.jpg).
I would also put the 1-pointers between the 2-pointers and the 0-pointers in the record, so 2 W, 2 T and 1 L would be listed as 2-2-1 rather than 2-1-2, but then W-L-T is of the same cloth as M-D-Y for US dates, so what can you do?
The Russian Hockey league switched from 2 to 3 points for a win, keeping one for a draw. Incentives the win in a more palatable way?
Incentivises*
The third and fourth bad drawings are the same. Seems like a mistake?
That some games are valued at two points while others at three is nuts. If you’re a fan of a team in a playoff race — been a while for me! — you watch the out-of-town scoreboard not caring which team won, just hoping that three points aren’t awarded between the two. Yes, fans don’t like ties. Fans also don’t like cautious, defensive hockey. The game plan for many cellar dwellers is to keep it close, get it to OT/shootout, and take their chances with the coin flip. This point system rewards the mediocre — and over-coaching! Make each game worth the same: three points. Incentivize playing for a win in regulation — three points for a regulation win, two for an OT/shootout win (with a point going to the loser).
Data supports that this leads to statistically more passive play in the last five minutes of regulation for an even-score game than the first fifty-five because both teams want to ensure at least one point. Source: https://jenpazour.wordpress.com/research/undergraduate-guest-blog-posts/does-the-current-nhl-point-system-influence-game-play/
Ooh, what a cool piece of research – sounds like a great class!
You might be interested in this undergraduate research analysis of the NHL point system: https://jenpazour.wordpress.com/research/undergraduate-guest-blog-posts/does-the-current-nhl-point-system-influence-game-play/
You’ll probably be interested in this paper too: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3132563
I believe that some people have told the misunderstanding above so I will skip it. Beside that, everything is okay
It’s fine as it is. Leave it be. You make it to overtime, you gets a point. Cool.
One change I’d like to see: Start overtime with four per side. At two minutes in you drop to three per side. That might make things happen a little slower at the start of overtime, but it would certainly speed things up as the two minute mark approached, eh?
It is suitable as is. Ignore it. If the game goes into overtime, you earn a point. Cool.
It is adequate as is. Don’t worry about it. You get a point if the game goes into overtime. Cool.
Are these pictures drawn in some software like photoshop or illustrator or are they hand drawings scanned? Love them!! 🙂
Hand drawings! Then I scan them and add the text (and do a few other simple manipulations).