The NHL has a new statistic in the league standings, called ROW. It stands for Regulation plus Overtime Wins and it is the primary tie-breaker at the end of the season for determining the final standings.  Now that every team in the league has played at least ten games and most have played eleven or twelve, we can start taking some statistics seriously.

The team with the highest ROW is Toronto with 8 of their 9 victories coming before the skills competition. Behind them are the Capitals, Oilers and Flyers each with 7. The Caps and Oilers each have one shootout victory and the Flyers have none. The spectrum on this statistic is wide and as of today there are two teams in the NHL with only two regulation and/or overtime wins.

Columbus Blue Jackets 2-10-1 (2 ROW)
New Jersey Devils 5-5-1 (2 ROW)

You read that correctly. The Devils and Blue Jackets are the only teams to only win two games so far before the shootout competition. For Columbus this is especially sad because they only have two wins and one shootout loss (3-2 to Colorado). But for the Devils this is even more troublesome because they've now had four of their games go to shootouts, which they luckily have a 3-1 record in.

If the NHL still had tie games instead of the Shootout the Devils would be 2-5-4 and would only have 8 points in the standings instead of 11.  Two wins through the first 11 games of the season would be abysmal and very reminiscent of last season's atrocious start

But thanks to the shootout we're not panicking. Because the skills competition has let the Devils win three more points in the standings than they would have otherwise. I think maybe we should be panicking a little more, because when the season comes to an end, this new ROW stat could be a lot more meaningful than we think.