Regulation losses can be costly

RALEIGH -- Winning wasn't the problem for the Carolina Hurricanes, as it turns out. They missed the playoffs because they didn't lose well enough.

The Canes won more games -- 43, tied for 10th in the NHL -- than three of the eight teams that made the playoffs in the Eastern Conference and two of the eight in the Western Conference, but Carolina will be on the outside looking in when the playoffs start tonight because of the scoring system, which rewards teams with a point for an overtime loss.

The Boston Bruins lost more games than the Hurricanes, 41 to 39, but because six more of those losses were in overtime, the Bruins are the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference instead.

This isn't the first time this has happened -- the Montreal Canadiens and Colorado Avalanche sat out under similar circumstances last season -- but the NHL so far has refused to adopt a soccer-style scoring system that awards three points for a regulation win.

Instead, in some NHL games there are two points at stake and in some there are three, determined solely by whether the game goes to overtime or ends in a shootout. But commissioner Gary Bettman has said the league plans to stick with the current system.

"If it's three points for regulation, we're concerned about what it might do to the game in the second half of the third period in a one-goal game," Bettman said at the All-Star Game in January. "We want to keep the game wide open."