New York Rangers: Overtime doesn’t matter, but it should
By Steve Paulus
The New York Rangers are just one of the teams that have taken advantage of NHL overtime to stay in contention for the post-season. That belief is part of the common notion that the game has radically changed due to overtime and the fact that you can still get a point for losing. There’s only problem. It’s not true.
It’s called the “loser point” or the “pity point.” Hockey cognoscenti like to point out how hard it is for teams to make up ground in a playoff race because of the point a team gets for losing in overtime.
It’s a myth. Believe it or not, overtime and the shootout have had practically no impact on NHL standings. 16 teams make the playoffs. Guess how many of the 16 teams currently in the playoffs would be out of the post-season if ties were awarded and there was no overtime and shootout? None. If the NHL ended games after 60 minutes and awarded both teams one point, the exact same 16 teams would be playoff-eligible and the same remaining 15 teams would be on the outside looking in.
Even more interesting is that the standings among the teams in the Atlantic and Pacific Divisions would be exactly the same. In the Metropolitan Division, Columbus would be in the wild card instead of Pittsburgh and in the Central Division, Minnesota and Colorado would swap places.
Last season all of the playoff teams would have been the same except for Florida and Columbus. The Panthers would have made the playoffs and Columbus would have been eliminated. The prior season there would have been no change in playoff eligibility.
What about the Rangers?
Despite all of the credit the Rangers get for their 5-2 shootout record, their record in overtime is pretty miserable. They’ve lost five out of six games in the five minute OT, giving them a 6-7 record in games going to overtime. They gotten 19 out of 26 possible points, but only six out of 13 possible bonus points.
As a result, they are in pretty much the same position in the standings that they would have been if the tie had been in place. If they played just 60 minutes, the Rangers would still be in sixth place in the Metropolitan Division, ten points out of a playoff spot instead of nine. And that brings us to our conclusion about what is really important about overtime.
What really matters
If you look at the “extra” point impact, it is not the point awarded to the loser that is important, it’s the extra point you get for winning that matters. For the majority of teams overtime is a wash. 18 of the 31 teams are at .500 or within two games of being even.
Six teams are three or more games better than .500. Those teams are proof that if you want to succeed in the new age of overtime, the key is winning games in extra time. The best teams in overtime are:
Tampa 8-2
Winnipeg 7-2
Edmonton 8-3
Columbus 7-3
Tampa, Winnipeg and Columbus are riding their overtime excellence to standings superiority. Edmonton’s good overtime record is masking their mediocrity.
The teams that have the worst records in overtime are:
Colorado 1-8
New Jersey 2-7
San Jose 3-7
Chicago 5-9
The Avalanche’s inability to win in extra time is costing them as they are barely hanging on to a playoff spot. San Jose should be keeping pace with Calgary, but because of their losing overtime record they trail the Flames by six points.. As far as New Jersey and Chicago, they are at the bottom of the standings.
If the Rangers mirrored their shootout success with overtime wins, they’d be only five points out of a wild card spot.