When Is a Loss Not a Loss?

This offseason should be one of great import for the Capitals, as its GM tries to assemble the pieces to solve the playoff puzzle. But no one doubts that the Capitals, in their current form, are not deserving of a playoff spot.
For some teams that missed the playoffs, however, much has been — and will be — made over their records and point totals. For example, from the Great White North one can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Toronto Maple Leafs, who finished nine games over .500 yet are golfing in April. Others can look to the West, and see the once-mighty Avalanche, who finished at 95 points and thirteen games over .500, jockeying for early tee times.
However, does the NHL’s W-L-OTL system truthfully represent a team’s record? Let us examine Toronto a bit more closely for a moment. Their record of 40-31-11 seems to indicate a team that played well above .500 for the season. Given that the NHL allows more than half its teams into the playoffs, one could understandably expect such a performance to lead to post-season play.
Ah, but doesn’t the “11” in the third column indicate an additional eleven games that the team lost? Ask anyone who attended those games, and they will surely agree that they left the arena with the same deflated feeling one gets from a regulation loss. Perhaps they consoled themselves by saying, “Well, at least we got a point,” as I did at many Capitals games this year; but it certainly feels more like a loss than the old tie did.
The “Loser’s Point” may justifiably help a team in the standings. But this skewed method of representing a team’s record artificially inflates a team’s season performance.
It comes down to simple math: in general, a .500 record indicates average performance. The NFL, for instance, finished its 2006 season with 12 teams under .500, 8 teams at exactly .500, and 12 teams over .500. Those statistics form a neat (and mathmatically sound) bell curve. In 2005-06, the NBA finished with 13 teams over .500, 3 at .500, and 14 under .500. Again, nicely balanced.
The NHL, however, throws the law of averages to the wind with its current system. This season, fully 21 teams claim to be over .500 at the end; only nine cannot make the same claim. Last season was the same: 21 teams alleged they had “winning” records.
The NHL needs to establish a new way to track a team’s wins and losses. The league chose to do away with the tie… for better or worse, though that’s a debate for another day. The current system awards teams one point for losing in OT or the shootout — again, the merits of which are topics for a future debate.
But the league has been very clear with defining “OTL” as an Overtime Loss: It is a loss, regardless of whether the team gets a point or not. Not a tie, a loss.
Returning to the Leafs’ example, a truer representation of their performance would be as follows:

W	L	OTL
40	42	11

This approach would neatly indicate that the Leafs lost 42 games, and thus, more accurately, should be considered under .500. At a glance, fans could determine the number of games played at any point in the season by simply adding the W and L columns, with the OTL coming into play for calculating total points. Note that this is similar to how the league recorded OTLs back when ties were part of the game.
This small change would go a long way toward establishing accurate recordkeeping, and as a bonus would restore value to the concept of being over .500. Not to be discounted: it would also stop teams from trumpeting about being over .500 when, in fact, they do not have more wins than losses (the traditional “over .500” implication).
This hockey devotee would like to see a little more truth in advertising when it comes to teams’ records. And while we’re at it, let’s give mathematics its due and embrace the bell curve — being “above average” should mean something.
The NHL calls an “overtime loss” a loss; so let’s count it as one.