Sabres' skid makes mockery of standings; more notes

Dismayed and confused: The Sabres recently lost 10 games in a row. Or did they? Bill Wippert/Getty Images

When you don't win or lose in regulation time in the National Hockey League, do you suffer a loss, a non-loss, an unacknowledged tie or is it just out there somewhere?

That's what fans and media in Buffalo are asking after the Sabres went through some kind of recent 10-game negative streak.

Because the Sabres didn't win or tie, local media took to calling the skid a 10-game losing streak and compared it to club records in that regard, but the Sabres went to the NHL for a ruling and it was determined that the streak in which the Sabres did not win a game but did pick up five points -- the result of losing five shootouts -- was not a losing streak but a winless streak.

"It's not a losing streak," said NHL chief statistician Benny Ercolani. "It's a winless streak because some of those games did not go in the loss column. Once they go into overtime, they get a point and [the game] doesn't go into the loss column. It's nothing new."

Indeed it isn't. The NHL revamped its standings when it added the shootout coming out of the 2004-05 lockout. Since the start of 2005-06, any defeat in overtime or in the shootout goes into a third category in the standings called OT. The Sabres have used the recent ruling to tout the fact that they were 0-5-5 in their recent 10-game winless streak, which is different than a 10-game losing streak because they would have to lose 10 in a row in regulation to be on such a slide.

So it's win, loss or OT, but the problem has been that most people find the NHL standings harder to decipher than locating a game on the Versus network.

Some newspapers print wins, losses and OT. Some print OT wins when a team gets the full two points. Some print OT losses where the team didn't get the win, and since there are no longer ties, they consider them games in which a point was rewarded simply for not winning. It's exceptionally confusing to the average fan and even the sophisticated ones because the NHL no longer recognizes unbeaten streaks (the old run of wins and ties but no losses). Teams do have winning streaks, losing streaks and unbeaten streaks (which appear to be the same as undefeated streaks except that winning in OT or a shootout is worth two points instead of the old one for a tie).

Confused? Most people are.

Did you expect anything less from the league that in 1999 gave you a Stanley Cup champion -- against Buffalo no less -- via a goal scored off a play that was illegal in the rule book, yet legal in a clarification memo put out before the start of the playoffs but not released to the general public?

Now, when you watch a team walk off the ice after the other has won in OT or a shootout, the players usually have their heads down, their coach is dismayed and their goalie is kicking at snow piles en route to the bench. In other words, if the other team scores more goals than you do and walks off with two points, well, if it looks like a loss, smells like a loss, and the players in the locker room will talk like it was a loss. But to the NHL and Sabres management, that's a non-win.To everyone else, you got beat. Why else do you think everyone calls it the "loser" point?

The irony of all of this is that if you ran the standings with two points for a win and nothing for a loss (meaning teams lose in regulation or the shootout and get nothing for their efforts, the standings wouldn't change very much. The only thing that would be noticeably different would be the fact that the Sabres would have established a franchise record for consecutive losses. If that were Buffalo's only problem, the team would be a happy bunch of non-winners indeed.

The Sabres stopped their 10-game whatever streak with a stunning 10-2 triumph in regulation time vs. the visiting Atlanta Thrashers in HSBC Arena, then went north to Toronto to lose to the Leafs. Buffalo fell again two nights later in Phoenix. The Sabres went to Dallas for their last game before the All-Star break and were skidding badly. The team that won the 2006-07 President's Trophy with the most points in the regular season is plummeting toward the bottom of the Eastern Conference and the overall standings. As of Thursday morning Buffalo had fewer points than the Leafs, the team that beat them on Saturday night and then fired their general manger, John Ferguson, Jr., three days later.

Oddly enough, or perhaps not, the standings on the NHL website Thursday stated the Sabres were ahead of the Leafs in the Northeast Division, Eastern Conference and overall despite the fact that while listed in 27th position, Buffalo is said to have 46 points on 20 wins, 21 losses and 6 OTs while the Leafs, in 28th, have 48 points on 20 wins, 22 losses and 8 OTs.

Go figure.

1 of 2