The Daily Faceoff Show: Digging into some NHL standings tiebreaker scenarios

On Monday’s edition of The Daily Faceoff Show, Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli took a look at some tight races in the NHL standings and how the NHL will handle tiebreaker scenarios.

Yaremchuk: Something that’s going to be talked about a lot heading down the stretch is the tiebreakers and the different races that are affected by how the NHL would break a tie in points.

According to the NHL’s website, this is how they do it… The first tiebreaker is regulation wins, so it doesn’t count overtime or shootout wins. If the two teams are also tied in regulation wins, then they add overtime wins into the mix as well, so it’s regulation plus overtime wins.

Frank, this is something that’s affecting a handful of races around the league.

Seravalli: I wanted to highlight three, in particular…

Starting with the Presidents’ Trophy race, can the Panthers catch the Colorado Avalanche? They’re only two points back, but if you take a look at the regulation wins column, they have a lot of work to do. Florida probably isn’t catching Colorado in regulation wins, so they need to finish one point ahead.

Same thing when you look at these other two races. At the top of the Metropolitan Division, the Carolina Hurricanes have an edge over the New York Rangers in regulation wins. For home ice in the Central Division, the difference in regulation wins between the St. Louis Blues and Minnesota Wild is six. It’s too much for the Wild to overcome, so they need to finish ahead of the Blues in points.

You can watch the full episode here…