As most of you know the President's Trophy is up for grabs between about 8 teams right now, which is something that I don't remember seeing before, especially this late in the season. Just a few days ago the Bruins sat at number 1 in the league, but they had a huge boost due to them getting 15 extra points for losing in OT/SO. In my opinion, teams should not be rewarded for losing games at all, so I decided to try and create a new points system.
2 points for regulation wins. Nothing changes here, it's been this way for a long time, so I'm cool with it.
2 points for OT wins. I debated whether or not to tweak this to award 1.5 points, but half points would be stupid.
1 point for SO wins. I think that shootouts are clearly a completely different type of competition than 5v5 or 3v3. Some people say to bring back ties if a game isn't decided in OT, but I think ties are stupid. So, if a game goes this far then I think awarding just 1 point to the winner is fair enough so that it is not weighed as heavy as a typical win.
0 points for OT/SO losses. I hate loser points because it causes teams who lose more games than other teams to be ahead in the standings.
This system gets rid of 3 point games, and it makes shootouts only 1 point games. So, you will see lower point totals than we are used to, but it also closer resembles point totals that you might have seen before the 2004 lockout so it's not a gigantic change.
Obviously, there will still be flaws, as there would be with any proposal, but I felt like this one kept things relatively fair by not rewarding teams for losing beyond regulation as well as acknowledging that shootouts are not quite the same as 5v5 or 3v3 OT. I also have thought about the 3-2-1 point system because it seems pretty logical, but at the same time it's hard to wrap my brain around teams routinely having 150+ point seasons, so that's why I kept regulation and OT wins at 2 points.
Oh yeah, I also am an advocate for 1v8 seeding, so I am bringing that back as well.
Here is what the standings would look like as of March 26 using this system:
EASTERN CONFERENCE
NYR- 92
FLA- 90
CAR- 88
BOS- 79
TOR- 75
TBL- 75
DET- 70
NJD- 70
---
PHI- 68
WSH- 66
BUF- 66
NYI- 59
PIT- 58
OTT- 57
MTL- 48
CBJ- 44
WESTERN CONFERENCE
COL- 90
VAN- 90
WPG- 88
DAL- 85
EDM- 82
NSH- 82
LAK- 74
VGK- 74
---
STL- 72
CGY- 66
MIN- 65
ARZ- 56
SEA- 53
ANA- 47
CHI- 39
SJS- 31
Not all teams have played the same number of games, so prorated point totals might see a few teams trade spots, but other than that this is what the playoff picture would look like. Detroit and New Jersey would both leapfrog Philly and Washington, Boston would drop out of the President's Trophy picture as well as Dallas slipping further away. There's still no hope for San Jose though, they are clearly the worst lol.