by Michael Fox

Created on: September 20, 2011

It's not too difficult to understand how the NHL determines its standings. It uses a series of points to determine who the best teams in the season are.

A series of points are used in the standings. The teams with the most points at the end of the regular season will reach the playoffs. The eight teams in a conference that will reach the playoffs are the three division champions and the five remaining teams with the highest point totals.

There are two ways how a team can earn points in the standings. The first part involves simply winning a game. A team will get two points in the standings regardless of when that team wins a game. It can happen in regulation, in overtime or in a shootout. The team will get two points for a win.

A team can also get a point by getting into overtime. A team that loses a game in the five minute overtime period or in the shootout point of the game will get one point.

A team that loses in regulation will not get a point. This is a critical point that makes it so some teams will try to hurry up to keep a rival from getting up in the standings even if it is by one single point. It may work to encourage teams to try and get a game over in regulation.

There are a few things that are used as tiebreakers in the event that two teams have the same number of points. The key figure involves the number of wins that a team had minus the number of wins that a team had in the shootout. For example, the San Jose Sharks had a 48-25-9 record in 2010-2011. However, the team went 5-5 in shootouts. Therefore, the tiebreaker for the Sharks in this case would have been 43. This could easily mean the difference between having the fourth spot in the playoffs and having the sixth.

The second tiebreaker involves the number of points that two teams earned against each other. Let's say that New Jersey and Philadelphia were tied with the same number of points and non-shootout wins. If Devils had won three out of four games over the Flyers and one of those wins was in overtime then the Devils would have a 6-3 point advantage, thus giving them the better spot in the playoffs.

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