NHL standings are built around team points. A win is worth two standings points, an overtime or shootout loss is worth one, and a regulation loss is worth zero.
The core standings columns
- GP: games played.
- W: total wins.
- L: regulation losses.
- OT: overtime or shootout losses.
- PTS: standings points.
- P%: percentage of the available standings points earned.
The basic points calculation is straightforward. Every win adds two points. An overtime or shootout loss adds one point. That is why a team’s points total cannot always be inferred by looking only at wins and losses unless you also account for the OT column.
What are RW and ROW?
RW means regulation wins: games the team won before overtime. ROW means regulation plus overtime wins, excluding shootout wins.
These columns matter because the NHL uses the type of wins a club has earned when breaking ties in the standings. Two teams can have the same points and the same total wins but still be ordered differently because one accumulated more regulation victories.
What is goal differential?
Goal differential compares goals scored with goals allowed. If a team has scored 180 goals and allowed 150, its differential is +30. If it has scored 140 and allowed 165, the differential is -25.
Differential is useful for understanding the overall scoring margin a team has produced, and it also appears later in the NHL’s official tiebreaking process.
What happens when two NHL teams have the same points?
The league has an ordered tiebreaking procedure. During the regular season, the first comparison is points percentage, represented through the fewer-games-played criterion. If the clubs remain tied, the NHL then moves through regulation wins, regulation-and-overtime wins, total wins, head-to-head results, goal differential and goals scored.
- Fewer games played, which means a better points percentage at that moment.
- More regulation wins (RW).
- More regulation and overtime wins (ROW).
- More total wins.
- Better results in games among the tied clubs, subject to the league’s head-to-head procedure.
- Better goal differential.
- More goals scored.
Division, conference and league views
The same team record can be displayed several ways. Division standings compare clubs within the Atlantic, Metropolitan, Central and Pacific divisions. Conference standings group the Eastern and Western conferences. League standings put all teams into one overall order.
For a pool player, the division view is often the easiest way to see local playoff races, while the full league view is useful for comparing clubs across the entire NHL.
See the current standings
Use the RosterHouse live NHL standings page to apply these definitions to the current season.
View NHL standings →How standings help with hockey picks
Standings are useful context for NHL game picks, but they should not be treated as a prediction by themselves. A team’s record tells you what it has accomplished over the season; it does not account for every matchup, injury, starting goalie or schedule situation.
On RosterHouse, you can move directly from standings to the weekly NHL schedule and then make your pool picks with that context in front of you.
Reference: the NHL publishes the official regular-season standings fields and tiebreaking procedure. NHL Tie-Breaking Procedure.