Detroit Red Wings' Streak Debate Should Inspire NHL To Adopt 3-Point System

Of the last eight installments to the Detroit Red Wings’ record 21-game home winning streak, four were aided by a couple of innovations that their predecessors lacked.

Detroit’s 3-2 overtime triumph versus Chicago January 14th, and certainly their three shootout victories January 12th, January 21st and February 10th, inevitably call the legitimacy of this feat into question. After all, the 1975-76 Philadelphia Flyers polished off 20 consecutive visitors within the conventional 60-minute time frame and never needed to resort to a lightning round of penalty shots at any point.

However right or wrong it might be, it should not be a surprise if the NHL chooses to hang an asterisk around this milestone. After all, this is the league’s second season of distinguishing regulation and overtime wins from shootout triumphs as a tie-breaking factor in the standings.

This might even reinforce the throngs of anti-shootout activists who have either been continuously frustrated for the last seven seasons or have just grown weary of the one-on-one spectacle since the novelty wore off.

Ultimately, overtime or no overtime and shootout or no shootout, a win is a win is a win. Or, at least, that is the way it works under the NHL’s status quo points system, which makes a distinction between losses but not victories.

The way it works now, and the way it has always worked, the maximum nightly allotment of points is two. And every time you puck more pucks in the other team’s net before the night is over, you get that maximum gain.

A two-point outing is filed under the win column—plain and simple.

One cannot really argue against that fact, and shootout advocates will surely embrace it while swiftly stressing that the final decision of any hockey game unwaveringly boils down to putting the puck in the opponent's net more times than they do.

And in each of their last 21 openings at Joe Louis Arena, the Red Wings have managed to tune the opposing mesh at least one more time, thus claiming the maximum allotment of points. Ditto the '75-76 Flyers in their otherworldly 20-game tear at the late Philadelphia Spectrum.

Still, there would be less room for accusations that Detroit rooters are flattering themselves or for that fan base’s rebuttal if the NHL took another step towards distinguishing games decided within regulation from those that require bonus action.

The most effective, if not the only way to go about that is to alter the protocol for point distribution.

Throughout its history, this league has arguably been the most willing of all major North American professional sports institutions to enact new rules and formats. So why not Xerox one more page from the IIHF rulebook and make a three-point package out of every regular-season game? Why not dole out three points to a team for every regulation win, two for any overtime or shootout triumphs, one for an OTL/SOL and zero for all 60-minute shortcomings?

If the Red Wings had been continuously asserting themselves in their hallowed abode like this under that format, the handicap would be much easier to highlight. The debate over whether to compare or contrast the 2011-12 Wings and the '75-76 Flyers proves once again that it makes every possible ounce of sense to reward a losing team for at least being too difficult to overcome in regulation.

In turn, though, this controversy also underscores why, perhaps, a victorious team ought to be penalized for failing to finish the game within three periods of straight, end-to-end hockey.

Detroit has allowed its adversaries to cultivate a cumulative four hard-earned points even while reaping 42 of the last 42 possible points from their home pond.

Conversely, the old Flyers never doled out a point to any of their guests when they matched the 1929-30 Boston Bruins’ record of 20 unanswered home wins. (Two of those Bruins’ victories, by the way, required overtime, although the opponents did not garner a point for their effort.)

In terms of the standings, the Flyers of the former days shut their visitors out for the longest time. The current Red Wings stopped doing that after 13 straight home wins.

That distinction would be considerably clearer if the Red Wings were directly losing points even while winning battle after battle. And as long as there are to be no more official ties in this game, triumphant teams might as well incur a mild fee for allowing a regulation tie to transpire.

The victor will still have one more point on the scoreboard and in the standings than the runner-up. But with good reason, the win would not be of the most desirable type.