How much does the standings tiebreaker matter in the round robin?

[Silva]

How much does the standings tie breaker matter for the top 4 teams in the round robin? if there is a tie in points, standings is used as the tie breaker.

I ran 5,000 scenarios assuming each team has a 50% chance to win each game. There is a 25% chance each game is a 3 point game (based on historical probability of a 3 point game).

Each of the top 4 teams is expected to finish with 3.4 points. This is because each team has the same probability to win each game (50%).

Bruins are twice as likely to finish in 1st than the Flyers. Results below would be same for Western Conference, just different teams in the top 4 seeds.

The top seed (Bruins) ends up in first place 35% of the time because of the tie breaker.
Second seed (Lightning) ends up in first place 27% of the time.
Third seed (Capitals) ends up in first place 21% of the time.
Fourth seed (Flyers) ends up in first place 17% of the time.


Here are the full results

Prob of 1st place
35%	1. Bruins
27%	2. Lightning
21%	3. Capitals
17%	4. Flyers
Prob of 2nd place
21%	1. Bruins
27%	2. Lightning
27%	3. Capitals
25%	4. Flyers
Prob of 3rd place
26%	1. Bruins
24%	2. Lightning
24%	3. Capitals
25%	4. Flyers
Prob of 4th place
18%	1. Bruins
22%	2. Lightning
27%	3. Capitals
33%	4. Flyers
Prob of 1st or 2nd place
56%	1. Bruins
54%	2. Lightning
48%	3. Capitals
42%	4. Flyers

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

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