NHL
The hockey gods have spent the last decade openly rewarding whichever team goes the longest without recording a loser point. Maddie Meyer / Getty Images
This post was originally going to be about something else. As often happens, I got sidetracked and went down a rabbit hole. And I’m glad I did, because I appear to have found something very important.
I think I’ve discovered a relatively new but immutable law of the hockey universe, and I need to share it with you now because it could have crucial implications for the immediate future of two teams, starting as early as tonight. We’ll get to that in a moment.
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As background, here was my original idea: Hey, what’s up with all these loser points this year? There’s way more than we usually get this early in a season. The Knights already have six. Three other teams have five, including the Avalanche, who’ve already surpassed their total from last year. Over half the league has at least three. We’re only 45 days into the season, and at a comparable point last year, only ten teams had three and nobody had more than four. You can mumble about parity all you want, but something is happening here.
I was going to try to do a deep dive and figure out what was going on, but it turns out the answer is pretty simple. The loser point is terrible. It incentivizes dull and conservative third-period strategy. Coaches and players know this, and it is becoming obvious that teams are shutting down and waiting for overtime. The whole thing is dumb and confusing. We’ve known this forever. We could fix it, but we shouldn’t. All smart fans hate this system and wish it were gone. That’s all true, but it’s also self-evident, and it doesn’t make for much of an article.
Great. Now, on to the important stuff.
While digging into the standings pages from the last few years, I wondered about the teams that went the longest without notching any loser points. In the shootout era, no team has ever made it all the way through a full-length season without having at least one, although the 2012-13 Penguins did go 36-12-0 in a lockout-shortened campaign. Most years, the last zero in the OTL column disappears in December. A few times, we’ve made it into January. One team, the 2020-21 Oilers, made it all the way to March, but that was the COVID season that started late. The longest a team has made it before caving in to the loser point was way back in 2006-07, when the Sharks made it their 51st game.
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This year, we’re already down to just two teams that don’t have a loser point: The Jets and the Bruins.
That seemed like something we could have some fun with. Maybe make up one of our fake trophies to give to the team that held out the longest without besmirching their record with a loser point. I could even dig into past seasons and see who would have earned the honor each year.
I did that. And I learned something that feels important.
Gentle reader, I am convinced that the hockey gods have spent the last decade openly rewarding whichever team goes the longest without recording a loser point.
They’re not even being very subtle about it. Once you know where to look, the evidence is overwhelming. And I’m going to lay it out for you here.
To be clear, I’m not saying that the last team without a loser point gets an immediate reward. That might be too obvious. Or maybe the hockey gods can’t change up their script midway through a season. I’m not sure about the reasons. But I can tell you that, with a single exception that we’ll get to below, the benefit is always delivered the following season. You have to wait a year to reap your rewards.
But once you do, the payoff is pretty much guaranteed. A study of the last several years of loser point avoiders shows team after team getting a boost to their next season’s results. It’s too obvious to be a fluke or a coincidence.
For example, in 2021-22, the NHL made it to the holiday break with two teams that hadn’t yet recorded a loser point: The Oilers and the Golden Knights. The Oilers made it New Year’s Eve before crumbling, recording back-to-back OTLs on December 31 and January 1. The Knights were the last team standing.
It didn’t help them that year, as they went on to miss the 2022 playoffs for the first and only time in franchise history. But the hockey gods were watching, and they took notes. And one year later, the Golden Knights’ season ended like this:
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As best I can tell, this phenomenon can be traced back to 2013-14, sort of. That year’s final loser point team was the Avalanche, in the middle of a stunning 112-point season that nobody saw coming. The following season was actually a massive drop off, which saw them plummet all the way down to 90 points and a playoff miss. But that turned out OK, because it led them to the 10th overall pick, which they hit out of the park by picking Mikko Rantanen.
That doesn’t really fit the pattern, but I think I know why. I think the hockey gods didn’t decide on this new way of doing business until it was too late to save the 2014-15 Avs. For the only time in our sample, they used the draft to patch a reward onto the very end of a season.
But by the following year, the 2014-15 season, they knew what to do. So they sat back and waited to see which team would earn the last of the loser points. That team turned out to be the Islanders, who made it to December 27. Those Islanders were a sorry bunch — they hadn’t won so much as a playoff series in over two decades, since way back in 1993. They didn’t win one in 2015 either. But the next season, in 2015-16, they finally broke the streak.
Our 2015-16 team is the San Jose Sharks, who made it to December 9. This is the one team that gets a same-year reward. Apparently, the hockey gods were still tweaking the system. That year’s Sharks went all the way to the final for the first and only time. The hockey gods watched it play out, huddled up, and made a decision: From now on, the one-year delay rule would be strictly enforced.
In 2016-17, the last team standing was the Boston Bruins, who got their first loser point on November 29. They’d won a Cup in 2011 and made the final in 2013, but hadn’t won so much as a round since 2014, including two outright misses. But the hockey gods watched those Bruins eschew the loser point, and they were pleased. And they rewarded them with the greatest gift a struggling team can hope to receive: Regular playoff matchups with the Toronto Maple Leafs, starting in 2018. The Bruins won at least a round for the next five years.
Speaking of the Leafs, they took a run at the loser point honors in 2017-18. Heading into action on November 22, they were one of two teams left standing, along with Calgary. Both games started at the same time, both teams went past regulation, and both lost, giving us our first photo finish. I’m not quite sure what the hockey gods do in this situation. Maybe they flip a coin, or play paper-rock-scissors. Maybe they punish the team that earns its loser point in the dreaded shootout instead of overtime, as Toronto did that night. Either way, the Flames were clearly the year’s chosen beneficiary, and in 2018-19 they were rewarded by jumping from a meagre 84 points all the way to 107, their best regular season showing since their Presidents’ Trophy win way back in 1989.
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There was no Leafs controversy in 2018-19, as Toronto stayed away from loser points until the first week of December, earning that year’s title all to themselves. The hockey gods were pleased, and they wasted little time in granting the following year’s Maple Leafs the one thing the players had clearly been praying for: The firing of Mike Babcock.
The 2019-20 season saw the Kings and Islanders both tapping out on November 7. That’s right, nobody even made it to the second week of November. That’s way too early, and the hockey gods knew it, so they cancelled that year’s bonus and also a chunk of the season to teach us a lesson.
The COVID-shortened 2020-21 season saw the Oilers take the crown by making it to March 7. They were the victims of a stunning sweep in the first round that year, but that’s OK, because we know that their loser point reward works on a one-year delay. And sure enough, the 2021-22 season saw them go to the conference final for the first time since 2006. That was followed by the Golden Knights, whose Cup win we’ve already mentioned. And then it was back to the Oilers as the 2022-23 winners. The hockey gods, it goes without saying, felt the need to up their reward, boosting them all the way to the 2024 Stanley Cup final.
In 2023-24, we made it all the way to January 20, one of the deepest full-season dates yet. That year’s team was a mess of a franchise that was about to miss the postseason for the seventh-straight season, a span that included a dead last finish and countless off-ice embarrassments. But rules are rules, and so the following year the hockey gods made sure the Senators were back in the playoffs.
That brings us to last year and the team that made it to January 4 before recording its first loser point. You can probably guess that team by now, just by looking at this year’s standing. Yep, we’re back to the Avalanche, sitting in first place overall because… well, now you know why.
My best theory here is that those 2012-13 Penguins were the turning point. Something about seeing a team go through an entire season, even a lockout-shortened one, without a single loser point seems to have sparked something in the hockey gods. It took them a while to figure out the right reward system, but once it was in place, we’ve had a decade of blessings. And counting…
Well, first things first: We watch the Jets and the Bruins very carefully, because they’re the two teams left standing in this year’s battle.
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Yes, we’re already down to just two teams, thanks to this loser-point infested mess of a season. The hockey gods have been trying to show us the way, but we’ve strayed from their path. Well, almost all of us. The Jets and Bruins are still fighting the good fight.
By the way, those two teams face each other on December 11 in Winnipeg. If they’re both still at zeroes on that night, and if that game goes into overtime, know that the entire outcome of the 2026-27 season could be on the line. It could be the game of the season.
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. For now, let’s stick to what we know: This is real, and it means something. I was almost hesitant to write this piece at all, for fear that exposing the truth might somehow alter future outcomes, but I don’t think that’s how this works. The hockey gods are sending us a message here, and it’s one that we’re supposed to hear.
The loser point is terrible. And now, we have undeniable proof.
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Sean McIndoe has been a senior NHL writer with The Athletic since 2018. He launched Down Goes Brown in 2008 and has been writing about hockey ever since, with stops including Grantland, Sportsnet and Vice Sports. His book, “The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL,” is available in book stores now. Follow Sean on Twitter @DownGoesBrown
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