Goalie and team LOSS / OTL (overtime loss) are somewhat confusing with the new rules adapted by the nhl in 2005/06 regarding overtime losses

• In the Regular Season the nhl awards LOSS or OTL as mutually exclusive categories. So in a 3-2 overtime loss the goalie gets an OTL but not a LOSS - they are mutually exclusive. officepools follows this format in the regular season so poolies can directly compare their points to nhl published points.
• In the Playoffs the nhl awards only the LOSS category, never OTL. officepools on the other hand continues the policy of the regular season and awards either a LOSS or an OTL, never both (so poolies have the flexibility to assign different values to each). So where nhl may publish 3 losses officepools will show 2 losses and 1 overtime loss for example - same total, just more specific

This means that if you want both losses and overtime losses to count, you have to put values in both LOSS and OTL categories.

Why is this confusing? Mostly because officepools.com awards all other point categories as collectively additive rather than mutually exclusive. For example, on an OTW (overtime win) the goalie or team gets both the WIN and the OTW - so if WIN=2 and OTW=3 the goalie or team gets 5 in total. For a 3-0 overtime shutout win the goalie or team gets WIN, OTW, SHU, OTS (win, overtime win, shutout, overtime shutout) - in other words, all additive - if each were worth 2 the points would total to 8. The only 2 categories that are not additive are LOS and OTL - they are mutually exclusive in order to follow the nhl regular season format.

Setup advice - if you want your scoring system to match the nhl in the regular season then allocate WIN=2 OTL=1 LOSS=0 - done! You can continue that in the playoffs as well, assuming you want goalies/teams to get the OTL credit of 1 point for making it into overtime even if they subsequently lose. If you want your teams/goalies to get -1 for all losses then enter -1 in both LOSS and OTL.

Verify your scoring - to verify your scoring system is doing what you want, click any player's point total figure as shown in the image below - note the cursor arrow is clicking the actual point total figure which yeilds the points breakdown popup which shows the player's points Before Scoring System and After Scoring System. You can also click the Stats tab for a complete breakdown of your scoring system - or for a comprehensive overview click the Reports tab (shown in yellow below) then Picklists to see the effect of your scoring system on the entire league

Click any player's total figure to verify scoring - note cursor location below

This example shows LOSS=-2, OTL=-1 for a total of (1 LOSS*-2)+(1 OTL*-1) = -3