You have to be a Decent Team to get to NHL Overtime.

I was doing some research and happened to come up with some interesting statistics that I thought I would share.

Here are the statistics from NHL TrueStandings relative to the number of games played to overtime and/or shootout conclusions.

There were 304 of the so called 3 point games in the East and 296 in the West. This translates to 24% of the 1011-2012 season’s games were 3 point games. You will note that Columbus had 13 games or 15.8% of the Blue Jacket games were 3 point games. The good news is that we won 6 of the 13. Note: For kicks, look at Carolina. They won 4 of the 20 games they were involved in and only 3 of 13 overtime games. [ and 1 of 7 SOs]

The bad news is that we weren’t good enough to get to as many overtime games as the average of the league.

The good news is that if we happened to be playing well and/or the opponent was not, we had a good chance of winning as we won 6 of the 13 – 3 point games.

	East	RW	RL	OTW	OTL	SOW	SOL	Points	Opponents’ Points	Total 3-Pt Games
1	NY Rangers	39	24	8	2	4	5	109	74	19
2	Pittsburgh	40	25	2	3	9	3	108	73	17
3	Philadelphia	37	26	6	2	4	7	103	80	19
4	Boston	38	29	2	1	9	3	102	77	15
5	New Jersey	32	28	4	2	12	4	102	84	22
6	Florida	31	26	1	7	6	11	94	95	25
7	Ottawa	30	31	5	6	6	4	92	93	21
8	Washington	31	32	7	4	4	4	92	91	19
9	Buffalo	27	32	5	4	7	7	89	98	23
10	Tampa Bay	25	36	10	5	3	3	84	101	21
11	Winnipeg	27	35	6	6	4	4	84	100	20
12	Carolina	29	33	3	10	1	6	82	102	20
13	Toronto	26	37	5	5	4	5	80	103	19
14	NY Islanders	24	37	3	7	7	4	79	106	21
15	Montreal	24	35	2	4	5	12	78	109	23

	West	RW	RL	OTW	OTL	SOW	SOL	Points	Opponents’ Points	Total 3-Pt Games
1	Vancouver	36	22	7	2	8	7	111	77	24
2	St. Louis	42	22	3	1	4	10	109	73	18
3	Nashville	40	26	3	3	5	5	104	76	16
4	Detroit	36	28	3	3	9	3	102	80	18
5	Chicago	34	26	4	4	7	7	101	85	22
6	Phoenix	33	27	3	3	6	10	97	89	22
7	San Jose	31	29	3	5	9	5	96	90	22
8	Los Angeles	31	27	3	6	6	9	95	93	24
9	Calgary	32	29	2	7	3	9	90	95	21
10	Dallas	31	35	4	1	7	4	89	91	16
11	Colorado	25	35	7	4	9	2	88	98	22
12	Minnesota	22	36	2	2	11	9	81	107	24
13	Anaheim	29	36	2	5	3	7	80	101	17
14	Edmonton	25	40	2	3	5	7	74	107	17
15	Columbus	23	46	2	2	4	5	65	112	13

RW=Regulation Win
RL=Regulation Loss
OTW=Overtime Win
OTL=Overtime Loss
SOW=Shootout Wins
SOL=Shootout Losses

Opponents’ Points=the number of points opponents earned in games against that team (this number is not the same as the number of points the team failed to earn because of three point games). This number shows how difficult the team was to play from the opponents’ perspective.
Three Point Games=the number of games decided in overtime or shootout (resulting in two points to the winner and one to the loser).

Now, I suppose this isn’t the time/place to go into ho screwed up the NHL is for having the 3 point games and as you can see they affect the outcome of the standing considerably. For example LA actually won less games in regulation [31] than Calgary [32], but won 9 games in OT while Calgary only won 6. But Dallas won the same number as LA [31] and actually won more in OT [11] giving them 42 wins, but LA had 15 points in losses while Dallas had only 5, thus LA made the playoffs and Dallas was #10 in the standings.

Instead of beating a dead horse, we will take a look at a few things in our next post, while I let you consider the charts.

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