A complicated set of tiebreakers, part 3
I think this is the end, but I will have to check the tiebreakers
In the previous two installments, I looked at tiebreakers to decide playoff spots in MLB and the NFL. This will try to clean up this matter in two other sports: hockey (NHL) and basketball (the NBA mostly).
I’ll start with the National Hockey League. For all of the league’s existence, there have been playoffs. There was never a period when someone just finished with the best record and that was that.
The league started in 1917, in part to make up a league that would keep out another Toronto team owner that the other four didn’t like. There were four teams at the outset: the Montreal Canadiens, the Ottawa Senators (not the current team), the Montreal Wanderers, and a team in Toronto that never seemed to have a formal name at the time1, yet appears on the Stanley Cup as the “Toronto Arenas.” In January of 1918, the Montreal Arena burned down, leaving the Canadiens and Wanderers with no place to play. The Canadiens found a smaller arena to play in, but the Wanderers decide to fold.
The plan was to play the league in two halves. The Canadiens won the first half of the season with 20 points. (They were 10-4). Toronto won the second half (which had just three teams) with 10 points. (They were 5-3). The Canadiens and Toronto met in a two-game playoff series decided on total goals, and Toronto prevailed 10-7. Toronto then defeated the Vancouver Millionaires of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association in a 5-game series to win the Stanley Cup.
The playoffs kept changing format and eventually just matched up the top two teams, and even with just four teams in the league, the league managed to avoid ties. In 1923, Ottawa finished first with 29 points, Montreal second with 28 points, and Toronto (now the St. Pats) with 27 points.
Two seasons later, the league expanded to six teams and increased the playoff participants to three, but it didn’t matter because the first place team, Hamilton, went on strike. Third place Montreal won the NHL championship, but lost the Stanley Cup Final to a team from Victoria.2
The NHL finally had a tie for a playoff spot in 1930 when the two Montreal teams, the Canadiens and the Maroons, both finished with 50 points. The Maroons were given first place because they had more wins than the Canadiens (23 to 21).
Then in 1933, there was a tie in the league’s American Division between the Boston Bruins and the Detroit Red Wings3 They both finished 25-15-8. The NHL then turned to a tiebreaker that was a bit different, called goal average. The formula was goals scored / (goals allowed + goals scored). Boston won this tie breaker by a margin .585 to .544. The playoff system that year had the third place teams in each division meet each other in a two-game playoff series and the second place teams would do the same. Then the winner of those playoff series would play another two game series. Meanwhile, the winners of each division played a best of five series against each other and would face the survivor of the series between second and third place teams. In the end, a third place team, the New York Rangers, won the Stanley Cup.
There was also a tie for third place in the International Division between the Canadiens and the New York Americans, but the Canadiens had won more games.
The NHL managed to avoid any problems with ties for 37 years. In 1942, the league contracted to six teams, called now “The Original Six”, even though only two of them (Montreal and Toronto) existed when the league started. During this time, four of the six teams made the playoffs with the first round matching seeds 1 vs 3 and 2 vs 4.
In the 1969-70 season, the NHL’s luck with avoiding ties in the standings ran out. The New York Rangers came into the final game of the season two points behind Montreal for the last playoff spot in the East Division. The Rangers were 37-22-16 (90 points) and the Canadiens were 38-21-16 (92 points). The Rangers game was scheduled to start at 2:05 pm in New York against Detroit, who was already in the playoffs. The Canadiens would start much later in Chicago. The Blackhawks needed a win to clinch first place over Boston on total wins.
If the Rangers won and the Canadiens lost, they would finish with 92 points and identical records. But, the Rangers could only pass up the Canadiens if they outscored Montreal by five goals. The next tiebreaker after total wins was total goals scored. Montreal started the night with 242 goals and New York had 237. The tiebreaker after that would have been goals allowed and New York was way ahead in that category.
The Rangers had two advantages against Detroit in this game. First, the Red Wings were locked into the third spot in the division. Second, Detroit had clinched their playoff spot the night before and had held a small celebration.
New York came out firing in the game, scoring 36 seconds into the game en route to a 4-1 lead after 20 minutes. With 9:48 left in the game, the Rangers were leading 9-3. Rangers coach Emile Francis didn’t think nine goals was secure enough to give his team the edge in goals scored, so he pulled his goalie, Ed Giacomin, in the final minutes in an attempt to get more goals. It didn’t work as Detroit scored twice and New York didn’t score.4 New York was in the clubhouse with 92 points, 38 wins, and 246 goals scored.
Later that night, Montreal coach Claude Ruel faced a difficult situation in Chicago. His team was going to have to either get at least a tie against one of the best teams in the league, or get five goals past Chicago rookie goalie Tony Esposito, who had recorded 15 shutouts on the season.
Montreal got an early 1-0 lead, but Chicago scored two power play goals and lead 2-1. Chicago kept up the pressure and at the 10:44 mark of the third period, Chicago lead 5-2. Ruel decided that his team’s only path to the playoffs would be to score five goals and he pulled his goalie, Rogie Vachon. This plan did not work at all. The Blackhawks scored seemingly at will, bagging five empty net goals in the game, which is still an NHL record. Chicago won 10-2. New York went to the playoffs. Montreal (along with Toronto who finished last) went home and there were no Canadian teams in the Stanley Cup Final for the first time ever.
The NHL didn’t like the sight of all the empty net goals deciding who makes the playoffs, so the tiebreakers were tweaked. And they got used in 1972 when Pittsburgh and Philadelphia tied for the final West Division playoff spot at 26-38-14. Although the Penguins had outscored the Flyers by 20 goals, the tiebreaker used was head-to-head record, which Pittsburgh won 3-2-1.
For a couple decades, good fortune and a very generous playoff format (at one point the NHL had 21 teams and 16 made the playoffs), made tiebreakers unimportant. Total wins was sufficient for the odd ties, usually involving seeding. But, in 1999, the NHL changed its overtime rule. Beginning in 1983, all NHL regular season games ending in a tie would have five minutes of sudden death overtime. This did not serve to reduce ties as much as the league would like, so in 1999, the NHL decided to give the team that lost a game in overtime one point and the winner two points.5 So, in the past, NHL games would finish in two ways, with one team earning two points or two teams earning one point each. Now, there was a third way and some games would be worth three totals points. The idea behind getting a point for an overtime loss was to encourage more scoring. The standings now had four columns: wins, losses, ties, and overtime losses.
So the tiebreaker system was revamped so that the first tiebreaker was not wins, but something called ROW (regulation and overtime wins), then would come head to head record (omitting the first game played if they was an odd number), then would come goal difference. If that were all equal, a one game playoff was to be held. But that was considered highly unlikely.
That was until the year 2000 when Buffalo and Montreal had a chance to end up tied in all the categories with two games left. However, the final games broke in a way that allowed Buffalo end up two points clear of Montreal.
In 2018, the chance of a tie in all the categories between Florida and Philadelphia for the final playoff spot in the East was so real, that the NHL actually scheduled a tiebreaker game. (Officially, it wasn’t in the rules, so the league made up the rule on the fly.) There were three things that needed to happen, including Philadelphia losing its final game by two goals, but the Flyers won that game 5-0 and no tiebreaker was needed.
However, the NHL felt that a tiebreaker game was still too likely, so the current tiebreaker system was instituted. The first tiebreaker is wins in regulation, then wins in regulation and overtime (but not shootouts), then wins of all types, then head-to-head records (there are a bunch of provisions so each team involved has played the same number of home games), then difference between goals scored and goals allowed, then goals scored, and then, and only then, a tiebreaker game and that’s only if that’s the last playoff spot.
In its first season, the new tiebreakers decided the President’s Trophy winner (team with the best record) in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season. Vegas and Colorado finished with 82 points. Vegas was 39-13-4 (last figure is overtime losses) and Colorado was 40-14-2. The Golden Knights had 35 wins in regulation to Colorado’s 30. The two teams met in the second round of the playoffs with Vegas winning in six games.
The NBA, with a much simpler and straightforward set of standings, has mostly avoided the dreaded “complicated set of tiebreakers.” But there have been a few oddities.
In the early days of the league, there were tiebreaker games played, although in each case they were just used to decide seeding. There was never a tie for the last playoff spot.
In the 1956-57 season, six of the eight NBA teams made the playoffs. In the West Division, there was a three-way tie for first among St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Fort Wayne.6 The league held a two-step playoff among the three teams with the teams arranged in a random draw. St. Louis prevailed in the playoff and eventually pushed the Celtics to a seventh game, losing 125-123 in double overtime at Boston Garden. (I think the actual games in 1957 did not have the annoying music track laid over it.)
In 1958, Cincinnati and Detroit tied at 33-39 and I never could figure out why Detroit was seeded higher, but that series had a tragic backdrop as Royals star Maurice Stokes hit his head against the court in the last regular season game and suffered a traumatic brain injury, ending his career and leaving him paralyzed.
By 1973, the NBA was a much bigger league, with 17 teams. Eight teams, four in each conference, made the playoffs. In the West, Milwaukee and defending champion Los Angeles finished tied for the best record in the conference. League rules stipulated a one-game playoff to decide the top seed in the league, which came with a cash bonus. However, the players union said that they did not approve of the game, which was not covered by the players’ contracts. The union said the game could be played if both teams wanted to play. The Lakers didn’t want to play, so a coin flip gave Milwaukee the top seeed in the West. 7
The NBA decided it was time to put in some tiebreakers, but they didn’t get formalized until 1980. The first tiebreaker was head to head competition, the next would be division (if applicable) and conference record. The next tiebreaker would be total score in all games played between the tied teams. In 1985, Lakers coach Pat Riley was upset when the league told him that a tie to determine home court for the Finals would be determined by head to head record and total points only. It seemed to bother Riley a lot because the Lakers would lose home court tiebreakers with Philadelphia and Milwaukee. It didn’t matter as the Lakers didn’t finish in a tie with either of those teams and played Boston in the final without homecourt advantage, and won anyway.
The NBA, which could get end up using a tiebreaker of net points in all games played as a tiebreaker8 (which requires a lot of other things to be tied). And if the teams were still tied after that, they’d just flip a coin.
The likeliest consquential ties in the NBA would be between Milwaukee and Boston for the top seed in the East. Milwaukee has a 2-game lead, but still has to play Boston on March 30. If the Celtics win that, Boston will hold the tiebreaker edge with a 2-1 season series edge. Memphis leads Sacramento by ½ game now for the 2 seed in the West, but the Kings hold the tiebreaker edge after winning 2 of 3 from the Kings.
So what have I learned about all these words I have written about tiebreakers. I will atempt to sum up.
Some tiebreakers are complicated, but there is usually a reason.
The first tiebreaker should always be head-to-head. The NHL noticeably does not prioritize that.
The second tiebreaker should emphasize how teams have done against a comparable subset of its schedule. MLB likes to use division record as a tiebreaker even between teams in different divisions. Not sure why that is.
One off tiebreaker games are about as fair as coin flips. But the games are way more dramatic. No one has a recording of Russ Hodges yelling “The Giants guessed tails! The Giants guessed tailes! The Giants guessed tails!”
If at all possible, leaves points scored out of tiebreakers. There’s no reason to have teams run up the score.
If you made it though all three parts, I salute you. Writing is therapeutic for me, although I am not sure what condition writing about this cures.
They became the Maple Leafs in 1926.
Victoria became the last team based on the Pacific Coast to win the Stanley Cup until the Los Angeles Kings won it in 2012.
Now known as the Boston Bruins and Detroit Red Wings.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. The Rangers had 65 shots on goal.
Additionally, overtimes would be four on four. Current NHL overtimes are three on three, followed by a shootout.
Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Detroit in the modern world.
The Bucks lost in the first round to Golden State. The Lakers won the conference, but lost a rematch against the Knicks in the finals.
The current leader in this category at the start of plaly on March 20, 2023 is Cleveland at +405.
I assume you were against sudden death overtime in hockey.
You and Steve Spurrier differ on running up the score.