The NHL standings are sorted by points, and for most of the season that is misleading, because teams have played different numbers of games.
The fix
Points percentage — points earned divided by points available. A team with 40 points in 30 games (.667) is ahead of one with 44 in 36 (.611), despite trailing in the table.
Most standings displays include the column. Very few readers use it, and almost no broadcast graphics lead with it.
Why games in hand are overrated anyway
“Games in hand” gets treated as banked points. They are not — they are opportunities, and they must be played, often in a compressed schedule that costs the team in fatigue.
A team with three games in hand in March is facing three games in four nights somewhere, and the historical conversion rate on games in hand is well under the .500 that fans implicitly assume.
The loser point distortion
Overtime and shootout losses award a point, which means a game between two teams can distribute either two or three points. That compresses the standings and makes leads look smaller than they are.
It also means a team’s record can look respectable while its regulation win total — the actual first tiebreaker — is poor.
What to track in a playoff race
Points percentage, regulation wins, and remaining games against teams above you. Those three describe a race. The raw points column, in February, mostly describes a schedule.
Reported at Yahoo and TSN; analysis ours.
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