from Bruce McCurdy of the Cult of Hockey,
Long gone are the days that a .500 record meant a competitive team. That benchmark went the way of the dodo bird when the NHL in its infinite wisdom introduced the concept of a third point for some — but not all — games, back in 1999. After the lockout scrubbed the entire 2004-05 season, the further step was taken of initiating a shootout to ensure that a third point was awarded in every tied game. “No more ties!” promised Gary Bettman, while introducing a subversive system that rewarded 60-minute ties disproportionately more than wins. Critics of the league — and I am one of them — derisively refer to the league’s new accounting system as “Bettman math”, where 2 + 0 = 2, but 1 + 1 = 3.
NHL coaches are no dummies — well, most of them aren’t — so not surprisingly, the number of regulation ties proceeded to skyrocket. In the 9 full seasons (well, eight & 48/82 full seasons) from 2005-14, no fewer than 23.5% of all games wound up deadlocked through 60, in effect creating a third point that was not awarded in the 76.5% of games that were cleanly won. “Let;s make sure of the one point, and go after the second one in overtime” became a coaching maxim that all too often one could see being employed by both teams when the score was tied in regulation.
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