The Puck Stops Here
Standings Built For Parity
by PuckStopsHere on 12/19/09 at 12:11 PM ET
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Yesterday I wrote a post complaining about the NHL’s standings system that gets distorted by offering a point for losing games - if you lose in overtime or a shootout. This system appears designed by the NHL to create a false parity in the standings. It is set up to prevent good teams from getting too far ahead in the standings so that weaker teams appear to be in the race for as long as possible. Some people support this idea such as Paul in Miami Beach who writes IMO, it makes the playoff race MORE exciting because it keeps things closer in the standings. more teams have a chance to make the playoffs later in the season - which was the goal, wasn’t it? but it isn’t good for the quality of hockey.
The system is not designed to determine the best teams in the NHL. It is designed to keep the margin between good and bad a small one. When you keep the margin small, it doesn’t take much for a fluke to occur and have a clearly weaker team keep a clearly better team out of the playoffs for no reason other than a poor standings system that was not designed to find the strong teams. The goal of any reasonable standings system has to be to evaluate teams and identify the relative positions of teams with as much certainty as possible. That is the way to be most certain that the best teams make the playoffs and thus make it likely that the playoffs will be as high a quality as possible. Weak teams that slip into the playoffs due to a poor standings scheme will inevitably fail in the playoffs and keep their games from being as high calibre as possible.
If you really want to keep the standings as close as possible for as long as possible and have no desire for the best teams to be at the top in the standings, here is a scheme that will do it: Give teams 2 points for a win in October, 3 for a win in November, 4 for a win in December, 5 for a win in January, 6 for a win in February and 7 for a win in March and beyond. It is nearly impossible to be eliminated from the race early because of all the points that remain on the board in the final games. Some games are worth more points than others in this system - as they are in the NHL system (2 point vs. 3 point games). That difference is exaggerated in this new scheme. It is also very possible that a team with a very good record that dominated the first few months of the season and then slumped down the stretch misses the playoffs when a team with a far worse record but a hot streak at the end of the season makes the playoffs in their place.
This example is exaggerated, but it is the kind of standings system you would want if your goal was to keep things close for as long as possible. When you keep things close, you fail to reward the teams that have risen to the top and it becomes more likely that a team who is significantly below can fluke their way ahead of the clearly better team. This could happen in the NHL this year. The Vancouver Canucks have a 20-15 record (with a win last night) and the Dallas Stars have a 14-20 record. Vancouver is one point ahead of Dallas and Dallas has a game in hand. A Dallas team could lose their next game and pull into a tie with a Canucks team that has six more wins then they do. The Canucks team is clearly the better team and the standings system does not recognize it. It is not designed to recognize it. The standings system is designed to create an artificial parity and by doing this distort the standings so that good teams do not appear as good as they clearly are.
The point for losing in some games must go. It defeats the purpose of a standings system. It prevents better teams from being identified as such. It prevents the standings from being what they are supposed to be - a ranking of how well teams have been performing. If the NHL will distort the standings for its own apparent gain (the NHL thinks that creating the fantasy that any team can win the Stanley Cup in any given year is in their best interests), what won’t they try to manipulate? What are the effects of this manipulation? They can keep clearly deserving teams out of the playoffs because they don’t lose in overtime enough. How is that a positive effect?
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