Cornell could finish...

[jtwcornell91]

The USCHO standing columns of wins, losses, ties, OTW, OTL, SOW, SOL is exactly the argument for going back to Win, Loss, Tie period.

They were so averse to having a game end in a tie that they invented a system with fourfive different kinds of ties.  (Non-conference games can end in a tie with no shootout.)

[jtwcornell91]

It's listed that way because in LEAGUE standings, shootout and OT is the same. There is a whole other column on our standings page that lists national records - right next to the league records. And our Pairwise page and everywhere else shows the national record.

True, and I should have specified that my issue is with how the league standings are presented, because shootout and OT are not always the same when it comes to tiebreaking procedures, as we saw above.  The ECAC and Atlantic Hockey both use "league wins in regulation AND overtime (not including shootouts)" as a tiebreaking criterion, and it's not obvious from CHN league standings which OTW were wins in the overtime period and which went to shootout.

I think the other conferences all use "league wins in regulation" as a tiebreaker, so they wouldn't have this issue.

The standings also don't include record against the top 4 and top 8, so it's not like they capture all tie-breaker information, only the record needed to compute the points in the standings.

I think the record for most complicated point system is the English cricket County Championship, which has 16 points for a win, 8 points for a tie or draw, plus up to 5 batting and 3 bowling bonus points for each team scoring certain numbers of runs or taking certain numbers of wickets in the first part of the match, minus penalty points if you do naughty things like have your ground staff prepare an inadequate playing surface.  It was even more fun a couple of years ago when a tie was worth 8 points and a draw only 5 (tie=the team batting last are all out with the scores level; draw=the four days of playing time end without a result), except if the game ended in a draw with the scores level, the team batting last got 8 points and the other team got 5.