How NHL standings points work — and why the "loser point" exists
Two points for a win, one for losing in overtime, none for losing in regulation. Where the extra point came from, what it does to the table, and why regulation wins are the first tie-break.
Almost every other league in the world uses a table you can read at a glance. Hockey's takes a paragraph of explanation, because of one thing: you can lose and still get a point.
The system
- Win — 2 points. However it happens: regulation, overtime or shootout.
- Lose in overtime or a shootout — 1 point. This is the "loser point", and it shows up in the standings as OTL.
- Lose in regulation — nothing.
A game is therefore worth two points when it ends in regulation and three when it goes past sixty minutes. That quirk is the source of every argument about the system.
Why it exists
Before the shootout, hockey had actual ties, and both teams took a point. Teams responded exactly as you would expect: protect the tie, play for the point, and the last ten minutes of a level game became deeply boring.
The loser point was introduced to fix that — guarantee a team its point once overtime is reached, and it will take risks in overtime rather than sit on the draw. It worked. It also created a new complaint: because overtime games hand out three points instead of two, a team that goes to overtime often can accumulate points without winning much, and the gap between good and bad teams compresses.
What that means for reading a table
Points alone can mislead. A 40-win team and a 35-win team with a pile of overtime losses can sit level. This is why the tie-break order starts where it does:
- Fewer games played (i.e. the better points percentage)
- Regulation wins (RW)
- Regulation plus overtime wins (ROW)
- Total wins
- Head-to-head points
- Goal differential
- Goals for
Regulation wins come first, deliberately: the tie-break rewards the team that won games in sixty minutes rather than the one that survived to a shootout. ROW excludes shootout wins for the same reason — a shootout is a skills competition, and the league does not want it deciding playoff spots.
Points percentage matters in-season. With teams playing unequal numbers of games, the raw points column is not comparable. That is why the first tie-break is effectively "who has played fewer games".
Reading the columns
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| GP | Games played |
| W / L | Wins / regulation losses |
| OTL | Overtime and shootout losses — worth a point each |
| PTS | Points |
| P% | Points won as a share of points available |
| RW | Regulation wins |
| ROW | Regulation plus overtime wins (shootout wins excluded) |
| DIFF | Goals for minus goals against |
How overtime and the shootout actually work
In the regular season, a tied game goes to a short overtime played three skaters a side — which is wide open and produces a lot of goals. If nobody scores, a shootout decides it.
In the playoffs, none of that applies: overtime is full-strength, twenty-minute periods, sudden death, repeated until somebody scores. There is no shootout, and there is no tie. That is why playoff overtime games sometimes run past midnight and become legend.
The wild card
Sixteen teams make the playoffs. In each conference: the top three in each division qualify automatically, and then the next two best records in the conference take the wild cards, regardless of which division they come from.
That is why a "wild-card race" table looks different from a division table — it pools everyone who did not finish top three and ranks them against each other. See the full explanation on our standings page.
Sources: the league's published tie-breaking procedure as reported by mainstream hockey media, checked September 2026. Our own standings pages say where they simplify anything.