PITTSBURGH — As they did last season, the Pittsburgh Penguins will spend the night before their final regular-season game watching other teams determine their playoff fate.
They didn’t catch any breaks last year. They’ll need a couple now.
The Penguins need the Philadelphia Flyers and Montreal Canadiens to win Tuesday night. If those two things happen, the Penguins will make the playoffs if they can beat the Islanders in New York on Wednesday night.
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It’s a situation of their own doing. The Penguins would have controlled their fate by either holding a two-goal lead late in the third period of an eventual overtime win over the Detroit Red Wings last Thursday or beating — or losing in overtime to — the Boston Bruins on Saturday night.
Those were home games. Those were missed opportunities.
“We made our bed,” Marcus Pettersson said after the Penguins’ 4-2 win over the Nashville Predators at PPG Paints Arena on Monday night.
Indeed they did.
In an alternate reality that featured a 3-2-1-0 points system, the Penguins, Washington Capitals and Islanders would be tied with 120 points — in that order because of tiebreakers. Those teams would go into their final games vying for two playoff spots. The Flyers and Red Wings, with 117 and 116 points, respectively, would already be eliminated.
A 3-2-1-0 points system would award clubs three points for a regulation win, two points for an overtime/shootout win and one point for an OT/SO loss instead of the 2-1-0 system that awards two points for any win and one point for an OT/SO loss.
Under the 3-2-1-0 system, the Penguins’ clinching scenarios would be:
- Earn a playoff spot with any win over the Islanders, or an OT/SO loss against the Islanders and a regulation or OT/SO loss by Capitals, or a regulation loss by the Capitals
- Finish third in the Metropolitan Division with a regulation win over the Islanders, or with an OT/SO win over the Islanders and a non-regulation win or regulation loss by the Capitals
- Finish in the second wild-card slot with an OT/SO loss against the Islanders and a regulation loss by the Capitals
The 3-2-1-0 system would have the Penguins positioned best because they have the most regulation wins (32) of those teams.
“It’s easy to say on this side of it,” captain Sidney Crosby said. “I don’t want to be that guy.”
Kris Letang flatly said “no” when asked if he preferred a 3-2-1-0 system.
“I think it’s fine the way it is right now,” Letang said.
Letang said he would rather see a different playoff format: the 1-8 setup implemented from 2005-06 through 2012-13, when the top-seeded team in each conference played the lowest-seeded team, and so on. Crosby said it’s likelier the NHL would adopt a play-in format similar to the NBA’s postseason, where clubs that finish Nos. 7-10 win their way into the final two playoff seeds.
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There are hurdles to any changes, including getting general managers and the NHL Board of Governors to sign off. The league and NHL Players Association would need to agree, and thus far, there hasn’t been an appetite for adjustments.
“With shootouts and overtime, every point is so important — and you realize that through the season,” Crosby said of the current system. “The ones in November add up just as much as the ones now, and I think you realize that down the stretch.”
The PWHL instituted a 3-2-1-0 points system for its inaugural season. The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun wrote in January that the NHL considered that system coming out of its 2004-05 season that was lost to owners locking out players. Instead, the NHL went with its current 2-1-0 system.
An upside of the 2-1-0 system is that more teams remain in playoff races longer into the season, but awarding three points for a regulation win would still influence strategies, particularly in later-season games. Several Penguins players said Monday night they believed coaches would pull goalies earlier in third periods of games in the final regular-season months if three points were at stake for a regulation win. Pettersson predicted that “teams needing points would go all out after January.”
Evgeni Malkin prefers a 3-2-1-0 system but stressed that the current one is not unfair. He said the Penguins “maybe should play better three-on-three” in overtime, where they have conceded 12 points. The Penguins are also 2-3 in the shootout.
“I think it’s good rules,” Malkin said. “If you lose OT or shootout, I think those are good points.”
Malkin reasoned: “We just follow rules and play what they say.”
To a man, Penguins players who discussed the points system on Monday night said they blame themselves for not taking more advantage of it. Only 11 clubs have lost fewer games in regulation than the Islanders’ 27, and Pettersson said they deserve credit for extending games. He also noted that Sweden’s top league gives three points for a regulation win, which, he said, is a more equitable distribution of points.
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Crosby expressed reservations about how a 3-2-1-0 system would differentiate from other eras. But the NHL once awarded two points for wins and an extra point only if games ended in ties after five minutes of five-on-five overtime, so it’s not as though the past 19 seasons’ worth of standings are an apples-to-apples comparison to previous ones.
The Penguins’ highest point total came in 1992-93, when they recorded 119 without the benefit of a loser point.
“When you look at the history of teams and points, that would change a lot if we made an adjustment,” Crosby said.
“It’s something to think about, for sure, with how close everything is. But I don’t know.”
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(Photo of Sidney Crosby: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
