What is .500 hockey?

[ken0042]

For me- the real; test comes in when you look and see that you need to have more wins than total losses to make the playoffs.

There are two loss columns, so you have to combine them.

[FlamesFan68]

Originally Posted by The Fonz

What is weird about it? You make the playoffs based off of how many points you get, not how many wins. That being said, why should .500 refer to anything other than points%?

It wouldn't make any sense to speak of .500 in terms of win%.

My point is, since the media insists on using .500 (which is not my preferance) I want it to more accurately reflect how the team is doing. Presently the media uses a loser's .500 or 50% of the points. In other sports I don't know of many that have overtime points and use .500 terms. It's just not accurate.

If the media stopped mentioning .500 hockey I'd be happy. A loser's .500 in today's OTL game is a bad record.

[home_sweet_dome]

posted in the other thread but really belongs here.

Forget what is .500 and focus on the simplest way to look at the standings while taking games in hand into account which is to look at games over .500.

For example, the current Pacific Division standings with this method is:

San Jose +5
Anaheim +4
Edmonton +3
Calgary +2
LA Kings +2
Vancouver -1
Arizona -5

If you look at just Cgy and Edm, they have the same points but the Oilers have a game in hand and thus rightly so are 1 up on us. If they lose in regulation tonight (they drop to +2) the teams will be tied, if the Oilers lose in extra time (stay at +3) they will be 1 point up, and if they win (go to +4) they will be 2 points up, which will line up exactly with the what the standings will say at the end of the night as both teams will then have played the same # of games.

Essentially a game in hand is worth a point which is pretty close to reality. Of course for good teams a game in hand is actually worth a bit more than a point and for terrible teams it is worth a bit less but this is an easy way to get a much better snapshot of reality than just looking at points.

[Resolute 14]

.500 has always referred to a team's individual points percentage. The fact that the addition of loser and circus points has pushed the median up overall doesn't change the fact that if you earn 50% of the points available to you, you are playing .500 hockey.

[saillias]

The threshold for when Oiler fans stop/start chirping.

[Bingo]

added a poll

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

.500 has always referred to a team's individual points percentage. The fact that the addition of loser and circus points has pushed the median up overall doesn't change the fact that if you earn 50% of the points available to you, you are playing .500 hockey.

There are 3 points available per game.

[Philly06Cup]

The loser point is a tactic used by the NHL to make teams look better than they are. Most years, 25/30 teams are 'over 0.500'. If you think being 0.500 makes you an average NHL team, you are being played.

[squiggs96]

Originally Posted by GranteedEV

If a league has ties, .500 is Wins = Half of (Wins+Losses)

Not exactly. A tie is considered half a win and half a loss. If your record is 12-12-4, then the math is 14 wins divided by 28 games. .500 is math. Let's suppose there are no ties, and you have an equal number of wins and losses. The ratio of wins to losses is 1:1. In order to get the quotient if .500 you divide wins by games. Since a tie is half a win, in either scenario above, the quotient is .500. An OTL or SOL acts the exact same way as a tie, because any win is worth 2 points, a regulation loss is worth 0 points and an OTL/SOL is worth 1 point, just as it was when there were ties.

It doesn't matter that 3 points are given out for games that are tied after regulation, as a team's record and winning percentage are not correlated to another team's record. A team can only get 2, 1, or 0 points each game. Because there aren't an even distribution of points in each game, the average PPG when taking all 30 teams into account will be above 1.00. I think it's currently around 1.06. That still doesn't mean that a team with a 13-13-2 record isn't .500. They won 28 points out of the possible 56 points available to them.

[The Fonz]

Originally Posted by Philly06Cup

The loser point is a tactic used by the NHL to make teams look better than they are. Most years, 25/30 teams are 'over 0.500'. If you think being 0.500 makes you an average NHL team, you are being played.

If someone thinks .500 is an average team, then they made the mistake of believing ".500" is referring to win%. It does not.

[Coach]

Is this what I think it should be, or what it is?

[FlamesFan68]

Originally Posted by home_sweet_dome

posted in the other thread but really belongs here.

Forget what is .500 and focus on the simplest way to look at the standings while taking games in hand into account which is to look at games over .500.

For example, the current Pacific Division standings with this method is:

San Jose +5
Anaheim +4
Edmonton +3
Calgary +2
LA Kings +2
Vancouver -1
Arizona -5

If you look at just Cgy and Edm, they have the same points but the Oilers have a game in hand and thus rightly so are 1 up on us. If they lose in regulation tonight (they drop to +2) the teams will be tied, if the Oilers lose in extra time (stay at +3) they will be 1 point up, and if they win (go to +4) they will be 2 points up, which will line up exactly with the what the standings will say at the end of the night as both teams will then have played the same # of games.

Essentially a game in hand is worth a point which is pretty close to reality. Of course for good teams a game in hand is actually worth a bit more than a point and for terrible teams it is worth a bit less but this is an easy way to get a much better snapshot of reality than just looking at points.

I agree there are a lot of loser .500 teams in the mix right now, but by the end of the season the "real" playoff teams turn it on and it isn't as close as it is right now. I'm saying by the end of the season, if there are teams in the loser's .500 in the playoffs the point totals for every team are very tight right up until the end of the season. Often that isn't the case, the pretenders fall out of the race pretty quickly toward the end.

[The Fonz]

If the standings were ordered by wins, then .500 would mean winning 50% of the games played.

But they aren't. They are ordered by points, and so .500 means capturing 50% of the points available.

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by FlamesFan68

BUT, there are extra points floating around out there that wouldn't be in the system with the overtime wins. In a typical win 2 points is awarded to a winning team. in an overtime win game 3 points is awarded in the game. That extra points is kicking around out there, it didn't just disappear. You now need more points to make the playoffs, you can't just be a loser's .500 and think you have a good chance.

If you OTL all the way through the season, which is a loser's .500 If you go and get a winner's .500 split wins and losses you get in playoffs over the other team even though the points are the same. Although, likely both teams don't make the playoff unless you're in the East Conference.

But .500 hockey doesn't equate to making or not making the playoffs. It just means statistically, you earned half as many points you could have possibly earned in total. It doesn't matter if a game can have 3 points given out. One team can still only earn a maximum of 2. I really don't understand the confusion TBH. Win percentage vs. point percentage are two different things. .500 hockey is a point percentage. It means 50% hockey, does it not?

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Bingo

added a poll

The way the NHL tracks things, these options are essentially representing the same thing.

[The Fonz]

Originally Posted by FlamesFan68

My point is, since the media insists on using .500 (which is not my preferance) I want it to more accurately reflect how the team is doing. Presently the media uses a loser's .500 or 50% of the points.

Referring to point% DOES accurately reflect how a team is doing. It's up to you to understand where that point% places them relative to the other teams.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

There are 3 points available per game.

Irrelevant as it is impossible for a team to earn more than two points in one game.

Calgary has played 30 games. The most points they could achieve is 60. To play .500 hockey, they would need to earn half of those points. We have, unbelievably, managed to earn more than that, so we are above .500.

The problem is that you are trying to twist basic math into something it is not. If you want to argue that people should care more about being a number of games above the median, that's fine. But .500 is still .500, no matter how badly you want to change the rules of division.

[The Fonz]

Originally Posted by Bingo

added a poll

May have been more straight-forward to word it as:

Winning 50% of the games played
or
Earning 50% of the points available

[StrykerSteve]

If you're 5-5-6, you aren't .500. You've lost eleven times and won 5. This isn't rocket science.

[FlamesFan68]

Originally Posted by The Fonz

If someone thinks .500 is an average team, then they made the mistake of believing ".500" is referring to win%. It does not.

You might want to repeat that?

.500 hockey is a 50% points. right? Right now, 50% points is subpar, there are extra points floating around out there because of the overtime losses. Them points don't just disappear.

So obviously win percentage is different than .500 hockey. I never even brought up win percentage. We're talking about the term .500 hockey.