GAME DISCUSSION THREAD

[Taro T]

As someone else said to another poster, you must not have watched much hockey before the 'loser point'. OT was two teams playing the trap and trying their best to not get caught in the other teams' zone. Awful hockey.

 

I'd be fine with the 3-point available system. I'm not sure I get Taro's 'if you get to a shootout no one wins' system. Seems like playing another team to a standstill for 65 minutes (perhaps making a big comeback or whatnot) should count more than getting beat 10-1. I understand the motivation, but it works both ways. There has to be a scenario where one team would rather have both teams get no points than risk giving up a goal in OT. Tight division and playoff races, I would think.

OK, maybe there is a scenario where it behooves a team to NOT get any points. Could you please provide an example of such? The only one (ok, I actually have 1 other 1 described later) I can think of is where you are down to the last game of the season and the teams playing are separated by 1 point and nobody else can catch them. If you are the better team (higher seeded), I can see where you'd like to have nobody win rather than risk the lower seeded team win. I can only think of 1 other scenario where the better team would rather get no points than 1-2; and that is the case where the better team could knock the lesser team out of a particular position and be able to either avoid that team or get to play a particular different team. (Imagine Buffalo vs Otters, except where Buffalo COULD actually beat them in the RS.) Buffalo could play for the tie knowing the Loafs would/could steal the Otters spot by the Otters not picking up a point.

 

The problem I have w/ your line of thinking is that you are looking at it from the losers/weaker team's perspective. The weaker team is always going to play it close to the vest (unless it's Atlanta) and hope for a fluke goal and a miracle. If the better team knows that it has to go balls to the wall or lose at least 1 point (and possibly 2), why wouldn't it do that? The odds are in it's favor if it continues to play the way it did to go up by a goal or 2 rather than hang back and hope it holds that lead.

 

I don't want to reward a team that is bad for being just good enough to lose a close one. I want to reward a team that's good for kicking another one's bippy.