Consider the tight race between the San Jose Sharks and the
Detroit Red Wings for the second seed in the Western Conference
playoffs. Hypothetically, let us say that none of their remaining
games reaches a shootout, the Sharks finish 3-0-1, Detroit goes
3-0
— and both teams wind up with 108 points.
SAN JOSE
Consider the tight race between the San Jose Sharks and the Detroit Red Wings for the second seed in the Western Conference playoffs. Hypothetically, let us say that none of their remaining games reaches a shootout, the Sharks finish 3-0-1, Detroit goes 3-0 — and both teams wind up with 108 points.
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Until this season, the NHL’s first tiebreaker—number of wins—wouldn’t settle anything as both teams would have 49. Moving to the second tiebreaker, the Sharks would get the higher seed based on their 3-1 head-to-head record against Detroit.
But the rules have changed.
Shootout victories no longer count in a team’s win total when it comes to playoff seeding. Because San Jose has five shootout victories and Detroit has only four, the Red Wings would end up as the No. 2 seed while the Sharks settle into the No. 3 spot.
The new rule is a result of the NHL’s love-hate relationship with the shootout as a means of settling regular-season games.
Traditionalists decry using an individual skills competition to decide the outcome of what they see as the ultimate team game; advocates note that shootouts are popular with a fan base that finds no joy in a tie.
In reducing the value of a shootout win as far as playoff seeding, the NHL last summer adopted an idea proposed by Columbus Blue Jackets general manager Scott Howson, whose team happened to have a league-worst 2-10 record in such games.
“I want to reduce the impact of the shootout,” Howson told the Columbus Dispatch last August. “I know they are great for the fans, but the total (of shootout games) is creeping up, which I don’t think is the direction we want to go.”
The new rule may not dictate where the Sharks finish, but it could determine which teams they play on the path to the Stanley Cup. The Los Angeles Kings, for example, have three more total wins than the Phoenix Coyotes—but one fewer win once shootout victories are subtracted.
How players and coaches feel about the change in NHL tiebreakers probably will depend on whether it helps or hurts their teams.
But in principle, the Sharks definitely like the idea.
“It’s a good thing,” defenseman Dan Boyle said. “The shootout becomes a little more of an individual thing, and I think if they want to reward team play, team points, you keep it with regular and overtime wins. The shootout, it kind of becomes your goalie and maybe three of your guys.”
Coach Todd McLellan has fielded questions on the subject since early December when a Montreal reporter asked him if the new rule might have an impact on the way he wanted his team to play once a game went beyond regulation.
“At this point in the season, I can tell you we haven’t addressed our team that way,” McLellan said at the time. “We haven’t talked as a group and said, ‘Hey, when we get to overtime, it’s way more important for us to win in overtime than to win it in the shootout.”
That could change in the final few games of the season, he suggested at the time, but now that things have reached that point, he is sticking with his original statement.
“I know that when we play,” McLellan said recently, “we’re going to do everything in our power to win in regulation. And then we’ll do everything in our power to win in overtime. And then we’ll do everything in our power to win in a shootout, and we won’t worry about how it affects us.”
Now, McLellan conceded, the new tiebreaking policy has potential impact on the final game of the season. A team might know, for example, that a shootout win will not help things and therefore go all out in the overtime.
Still, another rule makes it unlikely a coach would go the empty-net route even in that particular set of circumstances.
“If you pull your goalie in overtime, and you get scored on, you lose the one point you had earned,” McLellan said. “That one point may get you a chance at that tiebreaker, but going into the last game of the season, if you’re in that scenario, you better have it all figured out.”
— Story by David Pollak, San Jose Mercury News
