How many points for a win in nhl

They are only ahead by tiebreaker at this point. The Capitals also have 15 points in the standings, but they only have six wins. If your team is better than the other team over the 60 minutes, most of the time the score line will bear that out.

As such, your team should get more points than if you needed overtime. Consider this: under the current format, a team could actually score ZERO goals in a season, and finish with as many points in the standings as games played. Z — it means it has clinched the conference and their division title and will finish first in the conference. Y — it means it has clinched their division title and will finish first in the division.

There you go, now you can read the NHL standings! Remember that as you watch your team throughout the season, the standings will change a lot. Teams can go on a winning or losing streak and in a couple of weeks be in a very different position. Enjoy the rollercoaster ride that is an NHL season! This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Sid the Kid has won almost everything he can, but how many times did he win hockey's ultimate prize?

Skip to content When following any new sport, it is important to figure out how to read the standings of the primary league, and following the NHL is no different. It is all about getting a chance to win the Stanley Cup! Embed from Getty Images A team does not qualify for the playoffs by getting a certain number of points, but instead by being one of the top point earners in the conference.

L — Losses. This is how many games the team has lost in the season. The teams who finish 2nd and 3rd place in the division will play each other in the first round of the playoffs The division winner with the most points will play the wild card with the least amount of points.

The Wild Card winners are the two teams with the most amount of points of the remaining 10 teams in the conference who did not place in the top 3 division slots. Any ties in the standings in points will be settled by who has the most ROW points. Remember this is whichever team has won the most games in regulation and overtime and does not include the shootout.

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What is a good save percentage in hockey? This format does little good for two of the East's most frequent extra-time teams: The Bruins' cushion in the Atlantic is erased, and the Flyers end up knotted with the Rangers. In the West, the biggest difference is in the wild card, as the Jets -- with the benefit of a tiebreaker -- nudge past the Flames into the last playoff spot. But the Oilers would also get a boost here, sitting atop the division through a tiebreaker.

What if we did away with points altogether, something for which Islanders GM Lou Lamoriello has advocated in the past. I'd rather see it that way than you just extend the number of points.

The Lightning would leap over the Bruins into first place in the Atlantic. Carolina would go from the last wild card to third in the Metro. Columbus and Philadelphia are knotted in wins, but the Blue Jackets have more of them in regulation. The Flames again get the wild card, but it's Vegas that's the last team in.

But the biggest change in this format is aesthetic. The NHL's standards are, frankly, the most needlessly overcomplicated thing in sports -- yes, even worse than goalie interference penalties. As of , there are no fewer than eight different categories to which one must pay attention in the standings: games, wins, losses, overtime losses, points, regulation wins, regulation and overtime wins and goal differential, which is the sixth of seven!

Going with just wins and losses, you have to pay attention to Perhaps regulation wins, maybe overtime wins. Here's the thing about parity in today's NHL: It's all about inspiring hope, even if it's false.

But do you know what inspired even more hope? Let's say you're a San Jose Sharks fan. Condolences, this season. The current standings have them 11 points out of the final Western wild card.

They're closer mathematically, and much closer rhetorically. Different points system formats offer a few variations on the current standings. But outside of the Jets sneaking in through one alternative, we're not seeing any major swings in the 16 teams that hold down playoff spots compared to the current points system. This isn't what those who'd like to see a change in that format want to see, but is probably music to the ears of advocates for the status quo like Predators GM David Poile -- "I think this falls into the category of: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The system works. Skip to main content Skip to navigation. Would the NHL standings change with a different points system? Anaheim Ducks. Ottawa Senators.