Playoff-adjusted standings, April 4

What would team records look like under playoff rules?

I’m not sure that anybody especially likes the way the official NHL standings work. That’s because the job of the standings is to sort teams by their actual quality, and the league has tweaked them in a bunch of ways that make spotting quality difficult. Three-on-three overtime and shootouts are specific game states the NHL added to force each game to a definitive conclusion, and they pollute the standings.

The point teams get for an overtime loss was originally designed to do exactly the same thing, by encouraging teams to be extra aggressive in overtime knowing they had a point in the bank. It’s not especially useful for that purpose now because games don’t end in ties, but the NHL has hung on to it because it artificially inflates team records in a way that flatters them. We all know that a team finishing the year 36-36-10 is really a 36-46 team, yet often enough we write and talk like it’s a 0.500 team.

As we approach the playoffs, these distortive effects can lead to bad expectations. Teams that have been below average through regulation but great in the shootout will often sit higher in the standings than teams that have been above average through regulation but terrible in the shootout.

For calibration purposes, it can be helpful to strip away the clutter, to go back and look at team records as if they were played under playoff conditions. What that means in practice is that we award teams two points for a regulation win, zero points for a regulation loss, and treat all other outcomes as ties worth a single point.

What happens to the standings if we make those adjustments?

Western Conference

Central

1. Colorado: 43-15-16, .689 PTS%

2. Dallas: 35-19-22, .605 PTS%

3. Minnesota: 27-21-27, .540 PTS%

Pacific

1. Edmonton: 30-28-18, .513 PTS%

2. Vegas: 26-26-24, .500 PTS%

3. Anaheim: 24-30-22, .460 PTS%

Wild Card

1. Utah: 30-30-15, .500 PTS%

2. St. Louis: 28-31-16, .480 PTS%

3. Nashville: 25-31-19, .460 PTS%

4. Winnipeg: 25-31-19, .460 PTS%

5. Seattle: 25-31-18, .459 PTS%

6. Los Angeles: 19-26-30, .453 PTS%

7. San Jose: 24-31-19, .453 PTS%

8. Calgary: 24-36-15, .420 PTS%

9. Chicago: 20-35-21, .401 PTS%

10. Vancouver: 15-45-15, .300 PTS%

The biggest fact of the Western standings remains the same in the league’s official format and in this one: the three best teams are trapped in the Central Division. Based on regular season record, Colorado is the best in the west by a huge margin, Dallas is second by a huge margin and Minnesota is third by quite a bit too. Only one of those teams will make the Conference Final.

On the Pacific side, we get some clarity on a muddled picture. Edmonton is slightly better than Vegas, but not by enough to feel confident, and Utah is right in the mix with both of them as a crossover seed.

Anaheim is the most interesting team in this look. The Ducks have led the Pacific for much of the year, but they have done so largely thanks to shootout prowess (8-0 record) and three-on-three overtime work (9-5 record). These are not skills that particularly translate to playoff victories.

None of the other teams are particularly impressive by the regular season standings. St. Louis is the best of the bunch and isn’t that far off the Pacific pace, but the Blues are playing for a chance to enter the Central Division dogfight and they simply haven’t been at the same level. There’s a case to be made for San Jose based on youth and growth curve, but they’re a lot like the Ducks in that the things that might get them to the playoffs (three-on-three and shootout wins) are not the things that lead to playoff victories.

Eastern Conference

Atlantic

1. Tampa Bay: 38-22-15, .606 PTS%

2. Buffalo: 38-22-16, .605 PTS%

3. Montreal: 32-21-22, .573 PTS%

Metropolitan

1. Carolina: 35-21-19, .593 PTS%

2. Pittsburgh: 31-22-23, .559 PTS%

3. Washington: 32-29-15, .520 PTS%

Wild Card

1. Ottawa: 33-26-16, .547 PTS%

2. Boston: 31-25-20, .539 PTS%

3. Detroit: 29-27-19, .513 PTS%

4. Columbus: 27-26-23, .507 PTS%

5. N.Y. Islanders: 28-30-19, .487 PTS%

6. Philadelphia: 24-26-26, .487 PTS%

7. Florida: 29-35-11, .460 PTS%

8. New Jersey: 27-34-14, .453 PTS%

9. Toronto: 23-31-22, .447 PTS%

10. N.Y. Rangers: 22-36-18, .408 PTS%

The top of the East doesn’t shift a ton in this view, but there are some interesting items. Tampa Bay and Buffalo are neck-and-neck at the top of the Atlantic, but Montreal falls away somewhat because so much of its record is attributable to three-on-three play (10-5 in overtime). It’s not such a huge difference that you’d bet the house on the Sabres or Lightning in a seven-game series, but it is a real gap.

Carolina is a hair back of Tampa and Buffalo, but has the advantage of slotting in on the Metro side of the divisional split. Pittsburgh isn’t bad and the odds are decent that whichever wild card team the Hurricanes draw in the first round is going to be an honest challenge, but it’s still a preferable path to the Final then the Atlantic (or the Central).

Take a moment to pity the poor Capitals, who will probably miss the playoffs because they’ve gone 2-6 in the shootout. They’re three points back in a six-team pileup at the moment, and both Ottawa and Detroit have a game in hand. If Washington squeaks in, it will be an underdog, but not by as much as the league’s regular standings suggest.

The Eastern wild card race is a brutal affair this year and probably the most interesting story in the league. Move any of Ottawa, Boston, Washington, Detroit or Columbus to the Pacific division and they’d have decent arguments to go all the way to the third round. As it stands, if the less-deserving Flyers or Islanders get hot, only two of those teams are going to make the playoffs at all.

Based on this look, the two most challenging teams would be Ottawa and Boston. Bruins looks safely ensconced in the postseason and should be a legitimate first-round challenge. Ottawa is a different story: based on these numbers, they’ll be a very tough playoff out — on par with Minnesota — and that’s not usually the case for a club fighting tooth-and-nail for eighth in the Conference.

As a neutral observer I hope Ottawa makes it because it’ll make for a more competitive first round, but if I were managing a top team in the East I’d be quietly pulling for New York and Philadelphia.

The beautiful thing about all of this of course is that if the Flyers and Islanders make the cut, the overall quality of the playoff teams in the East and West won’t be all that different. That will mean that it won’t be the NHL’s insistence on divisional and conference seeding that rips off more deserving teams; it’ll instead be the league’s longtime hatred of ties and refusal to get rid of the loser point.