In sports, you win or you lose, right? You are rewarded in the standings by winning right? It’s either a win or a loss, right?

Well, in the National Hockey League there’s a bit of a gray area. In the NHL, you are awarded two points in the standings for defeating your opponent. However, you can receive a point in the standings just for taking a game to overtime. You don’t even have to win that game. That is where the term “3-point game” comes into play.  In overtime or shootout games, the winning team receives two points in the standings and the losing team receives one point.

Earlier this season, the Chicago Blackhawks of the NHL started their season with a 24-game point streak. Impressive, right? Yes, it is. Was it an unbeaten streak?  Local radio stations and some fans were calling it as such. However, it was a bit short of a 24-game unbeaten streak.

Taking nothing away from the Blackhawks, who, as of April 4, had the second-most wins overall in the league, did come up on the short end of games in their streak. But on Jan. 30 in their seventh game of the season, the Blackhawks lost a shootout against the Minnesota Wild to bring the final score to 3-2 in favor of Minnesota. There were two more games in their first 24 games that ended with them losing a shootout.

If beating a team in a game is definitively having more scores on the board than the opponent, then the Blackhawks were not unbeaten. In MLB, NFL and NBA, if you have more tallies in the score column than the other team, are you rewarded in the standings? No. So, this should be an easy thing to do. You either win and get a point in the standings or you lose and get no points in the standings.

Even though the points system in hockey can simplify things because people won’t see the “0.5 games behind” and be confused. However, when it comes to 3-point games, it unnecessarily rewards teams who have not rightfully won games and gives them an extra leg-up in the standings.