.500
Hockey
or
The NHL's "Merchandising of Mediocrity"™
"Everything below .500 is Loserville!"
- Reg Dunlap, and little did the sage know...
Peruse at your leisure the NHL's standings going into the All-Star break. Sure, it's now beginning the last quarter of the season. But believe, me the stats only have gotten worse so we'll give the NHL brass a break and just use the older numbers.
At that time there had been 638 regular season NHL games played. That's 638 games that ended in either a win or a loss, whether overtime was needed or not. Plus there were 101 games that stayed tied at the end of overtime. So that's 638 wins, and 638 loss? Right? And that's what the NHL's total say as well. So that's our traditional .500 level 'ockay, right? Throw everybody together, and all the games even out? Right?
Wrong! Take a look at the point totals, which after all is the official method the NHL uses to see who gets in the playoffs, who stands where in the standings .. the only proverbial SCOREBOARD!
Scoreborad sez - the official overall winning percentage in the NHL is .526
Take all the games a team has played. Multiply that total by 2, the maximum number of points the team could possibly earn, assuming it won every game. Divide that total by the sum of points the NHL has awarded to it, based upon 2 points for every win, and 1 point for every tie, even if the team loses in overtime!
Your total is .526
It gets even better in the Western Conference, which has been getting a lot of pub this season for its dominance. The overall winning perentage for the Left Half of the Continent was .542 Maybe not such a big deal. For years the Eastern Press Establishment had no qualms about bad-mouthing the Western Conference when the East Coast teams dominated the inter-league play, and they ran up similar numbers at times. So take a look at the East. Their winning percentage was .511 Well, maybe that's why the Eastern Press has not been whining all season about the new scoring rules, 'cuz without the new rules their clubs would look like even bigger losers than they already are.
How are fans gonna gripe about their team when they're at or about .500 level 'ockay? This after all is the year the leque expanded to 28 teams, which means with the 16-team playoff format, you have fully a dozen squads now that won't make it into the post-season dance. On the surface at least, a .500 level season finally seems to be an absolute quarantee of a good seed in the playoff round. Right?
Well, out of those 28 teams, exactly only 10 have records below .500
In the West, only 4 teams, Anaheim, Nashville, Chicago, and Vancouver fell below the .500 level. Edmonton (18-22-13-7) looks like they're 4 games under .500 but the point total puts them at a .528 winning percentage. San Jose (22-27-7-7) looks like they're 5 games under .500 but the point total puts them at a .518 winning percentage. Calgary (22-24-6-2) looks like they're 1 game under .500 but the point total puts them at a .509 winning percentage.
In the East, despite their supposedly poorer Conference totals, they have only 6 teams under .500 - the Islanders, Buffalo, Montreal, Carolina, Tampa, and to no one's amazement Atlanta. Pittsburgh (23-25-4-5) looks like they're 2 games under .500 but the point total puts them at a .529 winning percentage. The Rangers (23-23-7-3) looks like they're even but the point total puts them at a .528 winning percentage. Boston (18-22-14-4) looks like they're 4 games under .500 but the point total puts them at a .500 winning percentage.
Put the numbers together, and it means only 36 % of the NHL's clubs have losing records, going by the point totals. Or if you exclude the 2 most recent expansion clubs where everybody and their brother expect these teams to lose, only 31 % of the remaining established clubs have losing records.
That's fewer than one-third of the cities where fans can scream at Bet-man and the NHL about the quality of the product.
I'd say marketing has finally solved all the leque's problems.
I'd also write some satire about all this stuff, poking fun at how the 2 square metres of Dresden that didn't get firebombed had the most glorious spring ever, and stuff like that.
But how do you parody a parody?