Leafs are 2nd in the NHL, on pace for the best season in franchise history, and yet they're 3 losses from being out of a playoff spot.

It's just more of the NHL's artificial parity. The loser point and the fake hockey of 3 on 3 overtime makes teams look a lot better or worse than they actually are.

You don't really have a good idea of how good a team is just looking at the standings anymore except for cases like the President Trophy winners like the Caps in 15-16 and 16-17 and the Lightning this year due to how far ahead they are of everyone. You can't ignore extremities like that.

Here's a really good example of how bad the NHL's point system is.

Calgary in 16-17 was a 94 point team, Toronto was a 95 point team. So on paper they look like they're both equal right?

Calgary in 16-17 went 13-4 post regulation, meaning out of a possible 34 points decided by fake hockey or a coinflip, they got 30 points. Toronto on the other hand went 7-15 post regulation so out of a possible 44 points, they 29 points. All we can really garner from that was that Toronto sucked in fake hockey and shootouts that year while Calgary didn't. Neither records are even remotely close to determining how good 5 on 5 either of those teams are. Toronto that year played a tightly contested first round series with the President Trophy Caps while the Flames got swept in 4 vs the Ducks - a team that despite going just 6-13 post regulation, still had 40 regulation wins to Calgary's 32 regulation wins. The next year Toronto evened out their post regulation record to 12-7 and were a Top 10 team in the league while Calgary evened out their record to 9-10 and were a bottom 10 team.

Moral of the Story: Be wary of teams that play a lot of overtime.

/r/hockey Thread