We’re entering the stretch drive of the NHL regular season, and about a third of the league’s teams are already playing mostly meaningless games. Some of these fan bases are actively rooting for losses, so their teams have the best possible draft lottery odds of landing the No. 1 pick.
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It’s the second half of the season. Do you know where your draft pick will be?
You don’t, of course, because even if your team is absolutely terrible, we still have a draft lottery that prevents us from knowing anything other than that the Red Wings will move down. Apart from that, the ping pong balls will keep us guessing.
But while you may not know exactly where your team is picking, you might have already shifted gears to hoping the pick is as high as possible. That’s the reality of the NHL season – at some point you have to throw in the towel and start thinking about the future. And when that happens, it means it’s time to start hoping for losses.
It’s not easy for fans. But it can be even tougher on GMs, who may not want to admit defeat. Other times, it feels like a team is more than happy to embrace those losses, and might even be willing to nudge the process along. Most of us call that tanking, although Gary Bettman says that doesn’t exist and the media made it all up. He’s lying, so let’s check in on the tank index and see which teams are best positioned to make a dedicated push for Macklin Celebrini.
As always, we’ll be looking at four key factors.
Season so far: This one’s pretty simple. How bad are you? It’s all well and good to activate tank mode now, but if you’ve spent the first half racking up unexpected wins then you may have too much ground to make up.
Seller potential: With the deadline approaching, there’s no better way to tank than to trade a bunch of useful veterans. Your team gets worse, you gather future assets, and nobody can accuse you of anything shady. The problem, for some of these teams: Do they have anyone on the roster that anyone else wants?
Goaltending problems: You want to be bad everywhere on the roster, but this is by far the most important position, because nothing ruins a well-planned tank quite like a hot goalie.
Motivation: Maybe the most crucial factor of them all, this one looks at whether a team will have the stomach for an all-out tank job. Is the owner on board? Will the fans accept it? And does the GM feel like he has enough job security to reap the rewards, or is he going to hesitate to pull the trigger on a plan that will only benefit his replacement.
We add it all up, and let the math tell us who wins and who loses, and who might not stop losing. By my count, there are 11 teams that look like potential tankers. (For the record, I considered the Capitals, Islanders, Predators and Penguins but figured they were are all too close to the playoffs with veteran rosters to be worth including right now, and that’s pretty much where I drew the line.)
Let’s run the numbers and see who’s in the best shape to be in the worst shape.
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The great Connor Bedard tank-off of 2022-23 finally ends tonight. Who did it best?
On one level, the answer is obvious: Anaheim, who clinched 32nd place with their loss last night. Easy.
On another level, the answer is that we don’t know yet. After all, the lottery isn’t until May 8. Anaheim may have 32nd place, but we don’t know if that will be the magic spot that means they get Bedard. The season tells us who gets the best odds, but the lottery tells us who actually wins. Until then, the question doesn’t have an answer.
I think there’s a third option, and that’s that we can’t get too caught up in the results. In sports, and especially the NHL, randomness rules. Just like the best team doesn’t always win the Stanley Cup, the best tanker doesn’t always win the top pick. We can still try to figure out who did the best job of tanking, even if it didn’t pay off at the end. Bust the process, so to speak.
So today, let’s go through the 11 teams with the worst records in the league, and see if we can come up with an objective way to rank them based on how blatantly and effectively they managed to tank. We’ll do that using five categories:
Offseason moves: The key to any truly great tank is starting early. How much of the deck did the team clear before the season even began?
Opening night expectations: If everyone thinks you’re going to be good in October, you’re probably not tanking.
Goaltending situation: When it comes to tanking, goaltending is always the most important position. You want it to be bad, and then you want to make sure you don’t do anything to make it better.
Coach factor: Coaches don’t tank, but let’s just say you don’t want Scotty Bowman back there when you’re trying to finish last.
Deadline selloff: If you’ve done it right, your season should be spiralling the drain by February. That’s when it’s time to finish the job with an aggressive deadline clearance sale.
We’ll mark each of those out of 10, mix in a few bonus points where needed, and come up with a final score. We’re counting down from tenth to first, and unlike the 82 games your team just played, you actually want to win.
Wait, if you finish last on this list, does that mean you tanked at tanking?
Offseason moves: 4/10. Quiet, apart from what they thought was an upgrade in Tony DeAngelo.
Opening night expectations: 8/10. Most of us figured they’d be bad, although not necessarily bad enough to compete for top lottery odds. (Checks standings.) Nailed it.
Goaltending situation: 3/10. With Carter Hart coming off a solid rebound season, the Flyers seemed as set as any team on this list.
Coach factor: 2/10. They went out and hired John Tortorella, a coach who specialized in squeezing the most out of a roster (included loser points). Purely in terms of a tanking opportunity, that didn’t seem ideal.
Deadline selloff: 0/10. Help me out here, when your GM does next to nothing at the deadline and then gets fired a few days later, is that bad?
Bonus points: +2 for new management which may finally see the writing on the wall, although it really came too late for this season.
Total score: 19/50. The Flyers are a bad team that should have been even worse, making them the current poster child for a franchise spinning its wheels.
I considered not even including the Blues, but their record says they should be here.
Offseason moves: 5/10. They moved Ville Husso and lost David Perron, but that felt more like roster/cap management than an attempt at getting worse.
Opening night expectations: 2/10. Coming off a 109-point season, we thought they were at least a playoff team.
Goaltending situation: 3/10. Jordan Binnington wasn’t great, but with his contract and Cup ring it’s not like they were ever going to make a change.
Coach factor: 3/10. Craig Berube’s seat is probably getting warm but you never figured he was in any immediate danger.
Deadline selloff: 9/10. Here’s where we can finally find some points, as they moved Vladimir Tarasenko and Ryan O’Reilly (and got both deals done a few weeks early).
Bonus points: -1 for going a combined 11-1-0 against the Ducks, Blue Jackets, Blackhawks and Sharks. Just no sense of the moment, you know?
Total score: 21/50. This wasn’t a tank, it was a season where everything went wrong.
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It’s January. Do you know where your team’s tank is?
You should, because we’re about to hit the halfway point of the season, and it’s time to get serious about losing with our second Tank Index of the season. This is normally a gimmick that I break out once a year, but this upcoming draft class is so top-heavy that we needed multiple check-ins along the way.
Our first came back in November, with the surprisingly awful Ducks and Blue Jackets leading the way. Since then, we’ve seen teams move up and down the standings. But far more importantly, we’ve just seen a World Juniors where Connor Bedard went absolute cheat code on the rest of the world. If anything, the urgency should be even higher now. Spoiler alert: For at least a few teams, it absolutely is.
As always, this entire exercise takes place in a fictional alternate universe where tanking exists, because Gary Bettman has assured us that it doesn’t in this one and he wouldn’t lie to us. We’re scoring teams based on four criteria:
Season so far: How are they doing so far? A team will have less motivation to really commit to a tank if the absolute bottom is already out of reach. The worse the record, the better the score.
Seller potential: Who has the potential to get worse quickly by trading useful contributors? The key here is having useful players that others teams might actually want.
Goaltending problems: The most volatile position in hockey is also the key to a tank. One hot goalie can ruin the plan, while a few lousy ones can make it look easy.
Motivation: Maybe the most important factor of all, especially this year. Sure, you want a high draft pick, but how far are you willing to go? If you’re a GM, are you risking you job? If you’re the owner, will it impact your bottom line? Will the media be calling for heads? What about the fan base?
Four scores, each out of ten, and then we add it all up
Last time, we looked at a dozen teams that felt like tanking contenders, which feels like a good cutoff. This time around, the Predators and Sabres have played well enough to escape consideration, at least temporarily. That means that two new teams have joined the list, and one of them has some unique circumstances attached. We’ll get to those guys first.
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It’s mid-November, and it goes without saying that every NHL team is focused on the big prize.
Which prize? That part depends on the team.
For most teams, it’s the Stanley Cup. You’ve probably heard of it. Big silver thing, apparently pretty heavy, hangs out in the Hall of Fame in Toronto for most of the year and then heads down to America in the spring. But that’s not every team’s focus, and that’s especially true this year.
We can be honest, right? We don’t have to do the Gary Bettman thing, where he pretends that NHL teams never tank and it’s only the mean old media making stuff up. That kind of thing is insulting to your intelligence as a fan, because you know teams tank, because you have eyes and a brain. Sure, you might prefer to call it something else, especially when your team is doing it. But you know a tank when you see it.
And we’ll be seeing a few of them this year, because the top of the draft class of 2023 is absolutely stacked. There could be three legitimate franchise players, including Connor Bedard, who might be the next Crosby or McDavid or maybe even more. Remember, the league nerfed their lottery system a few years ago, so whichever team finishes dead last this year is guaranteed to get one of those top three picks. The incentive to bad is obvious. Sorry Gary, fire up the tank and let’s roll.
But which teams will do it? And when? And most importantly of all, who’s in the best position to make it work? Welcome to the Tank Index, where we try to find out. This is a gimmick I typically pull out later in the season. But this year isn’t typical, and with so much prospect gold waiting at the end of the tanking rainbow, it might be worth it to check in a few times as the season goes on.
We’ll be looking at a few factors:
Season so far: You can’t win the top pick in October, but you can go a long way to losing it. Even a few extra points picked up in the first month can be devastating to a team’s tank, so how bad has a team looked in the early going?
Seller potential: The best way to tank is to trade useful players for picks and prospects, because you get to collect future assets while also getting worse in the short term. Of course, you need some useful players first, especially ones on expiring contracts.
Goaltending problems: Even in today’s NHL, it remains true that teams go as far as their goaltending takes them. If you want to tank, you’d better make sure your goalie stinks, because there’s nothing worse than watching some guy stand on his head and cost you precious lottery odds.
Motivation: A tricky one, but maybe the most important factor of all. This one starts with the GM, who needs job security to go all-in on being bad. Will ownership understand and accept the plan? What about the market, and local media? It’s not easy to tank when one or more stakeholders aren’t on board.
We’ll give each team a score in all four categories, and see where that leaves them. For this first 2022-23 tank index, I’m going to focus on the eight worst teams by points percentage heading into Tuesday night, then add four more that I think are worth including based on preseason expectations. That brings us to an even dozen, and we’ll count them down as we work our way to this year’s early tank favorite.
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In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- A quick reaction to Brendan Leipsic being an embarrassment
- Our thoughts on the league's weird new lottery idea that massively helps on specific team
- More June draft fallout (and why I'm glad the GMs are sad)
- Ryan and I make the case for reopening the trade market
- Thoughts on those TSN all-time rosters, including the one important thing they get right
- A really fun quiz based on Name That Tune
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
Every now and then, it’s fun to write about a topic that borders on fiction. Fantasy scenarios. Stuff like building rosters out of star players from across NHL history who never actually played together or imagining strange new rules that could never actually exist.
So today, let’s pretend that NHL teams would ever tank.
I know, I know, tanking isn’t a thing in the NHL. Gary Bettman told us so, and he’s an unfailingly honest man who never lies to his customers. Every franchise is trying as hard as it can to win every single game and nobody is keeping an eye on the draft lottery odds and thinking ahead to building a contender around Alexis Lafreniere. Nope. Every team out there desperately wants to win as many games as they can until the season ends. Nothing to see here.
But just for fun … what if they weren’t? What if – just stay with me, I know this is going sound crazy – what if some front office out there realized that they weren’t making the playoffs and decided that it might make more sense for their long-term success to crash and burn down the stretch? In that weird and impossible world, which teams would be in the best position to actually do that?
That’s what we’re going to figure out today. We’re going to take a look at the teams that are fading out of the playoff race and try to figure out which ones would be best positioned to pull the chute if they wanted to. We’ll be focused on three key categories:
Seller potential: If you want to get bad, you start by getting rid of useful players. With the deadline approaching, do they have assets that other teams would be interested in? Bonus points if those players are on expiring contracts, since those are still the most likely names to be moved.
Goaltending problems: Harry Neale once said that goaltending is 75 percent of hockey, unless you don’t have it, then it’s 100 percent. If you wanted to lose games down the stretch, the single most effective way to make sure that happens is to not have goaltending. Some teams are already in that situation. Others would have to figure out how to get there.
Motivation: Even in an alternate reality where tanking was an obvious and common strategy, not every team can get away with it. Does the GM have the job security to get worse, or is he worried about his own future? Are the fans willing to accept a few more losses, or has their patience run out? And are they close enough to a playoff run that they can pretend they’re still in it?
Add up those three categories, and we’ve got ourselves a Tank Index score. We’ll take all the teams that are at least six points out of a playoff spot, which gives us 11 teams to work with. Who’s in the best position to tank? Who shouldn’t bother? Let’s find out …
Seller potential: 4/10. They didn’t place a single player on Craig Custance’s trade board, although TSN thinks it’s at least possible that Ilya Kovalchuk could be in play. Beyond him and Marco Scandella, there aren’t any rentals here, although half the team is a UFA in 2021 so they could get some interest from teams that weren’t afraid of a little term. We’re told that Shea Weber and Carey Price won’t even be considered, though.
Goaltending problems: 4/10. Price has been all over the map this year, but he’s had some strong games lately. That’s great if you think the Habs still have a shot at the playoffs. If you’re hoping for lottery odds, it’s about the worst news possible. Then again, any sort of full-on tank job could always involve shutting down the veteran with some sort of mysterious late-season injury.
Motivation: 6/10. Marc Bergevin hasn’t given much indication that he’s ready to pack it in, and the Canadiens were showing just a little bit of life before the break. It wouldn’t take more than a bad week or two for their odds to go from slim to none. But in the meantime, a tank job doesn’t seem to be a big part of the GM’s to-do list.
Tank potential total: 14/30. We could argue over what the Habs should do, but unless they fall out of the race quickly it doesn’t seem like major changes are in play. They don’t seem to want to sell, and they don’t really have much to sell, at least if we believe Bergevin.
Seller potential: 4/10. They have six pending UFAs, but none are big names aside from Ryan Miller. Ondrej Kase or Jakob Silfverberg would feel like more of a hockey move, and there doesn’t seem to be any buzz about shaking things up by putting Ryan Getzlaf on the market, so Bob Murray will either have to get creative or stay relatively quiet. Or they could just trade everyone to the Flames.
Goaltending problems: 2/10. John Gibson hasn’t been great this year, but he’s exactly the sort of goalie who can randomly get red hot in March and ruin his team’s draft odds.
Motivation: 9/10. It’s been a disappointing season, their farm system is only middle-of-the-pack, and their franchise forward is 34 with one year left on his deal and no obvious heir apparent. If anyone could use a lottery win, it’s these guys.
Tank potential total: 15/30. Here’s hoping Dallas Eakins learned a thing or two about winning lotteries during his brief stint in Edmonton.
Seller potential: 5/10. This one’s a little tricky, since their rental options include Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau, two veterans who probably don’t want to go anywhere but would have the potential to make for all-time OGWAC stories if they did. (For what it’s worth, Marleau apparently doesn’t have no-trade protection.) More realistically, Brenden Dillon could be an option. But most of their big names have long-term deals that feel unmovable.
Goaltending problems: 10/10. I’ll save Sharks fans the misery of repeating the numbers. By the way, that’s the first time San Jose fans have seen the word “save” all season.
Motivation: 1/10. Here’s the rub. As everyone knows by now, the Sharks don’t have their own first-round pick, having traded it to the Senators in the Erik Karlsson deal. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t embrace the opportunity to build for the future, but “winning” the lottery would just be more salt in the season-long wound.
Tank potential total: 16/30. How secure do you think Doug Wilson feels these days? That could be important, and determine just how much of a sledgehammer he’s willing to take to this mess.
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NHL teams don’t tank.
We know this, because Gary Bettman has told us so. Oh, sure. Fans everywhere insist on thinking that it happens because we have eyes and common sense, but Bettman has assured us that’s only because the media makes it all up. Nobody tanks in the NHL. Nope, nothing to see here.
But just for fun, let’s pretend that they did. Not the players, mind you; even a cynic would admit that those guys are wired to go as hard as they can in any game that counts. But let’s imagine that the decision-makers in the front office and behind the bench occasionally realized that there was nothing left to play for apart from lottery odds, and decided to do the logical thing and try to increase their chances of landing a franchise player in the draft.
In that strange alternate universe in which tanking was an obvious and undeniable part of the NHL, which of this year’s worst teams would be in the best position to pull it off? Call it the power tankings if you’d like. Who has the advantage when the time comes to Choose to Lose for Hughes?
Let’s find out. Today, we’re going to take the 10 teams that are within a half-dozen points of dead last in the league and rank them based on how successfully they could tank if they chose to. For each of those teams, we’ll look at where they stand in three key categories that are crucial to a good midseason tank:
Seller status: The easiest way to tank at this time of year is to start trading anyone who might help you win a few games down the stretch. A well-executed deadline selloff kills two birds with one stone, stocking the cupboard with picks and prospects while also making the team significantly worse down the stretch. But not every team is positioned to pull this off, especially if their veterans are tied up on long-term deals that will scare off teams looking for rentals.
Goaltending problems: The gold standard for modern NHL tanking is the Buffalo Sabres’ performance during the Connor McDavid tank battle of 2015, which included them pulling off a brilliant move: They traded away both of their goaltenders with a month left in the season, and finished the season by giving starts to guys like Matt Hackett and Andrey Makarov, who were never seen in the NHL again. Not every team is willing to go that far, but shaky goaltending gives a tanking team a big edge.
Motivation: Put simply, how bad do they want it? At this time of year, some teams are more than happy to hit rock bottom and then grab a shovel. Others might still be holding out hope of a late playoff run. Still others might have GMs whose jobs could be in danger if they don’t finish strong. And, uh, other teams might have already traded away their first-round pick. We’re not naming any names here; we’re just saying that might also be a thing that could happen.
Each of our 10 teams will get a score in each category, which will be based on a complex calculation that involves me pulling it out of the air. Then, we’ll add them up and determine the 2018-19 season’s potential tank king.
Again, NHL teams don’t tank, because Gary Bettman says so. But if they did, here’s who could be in the best position to make a big push in this year’s race to the bottom.
Seller status: 5/10. Cam Talbot’s really the only pending UFA who’d get much traction as a rental, and even that’s doubtful. They could trade somebody like Jess Puljujarvi, but for the most part the current Oilers roster seems to be a few untouchables and then a bunch of guys nobody else would want, without much in between.
Goaltending problems: 9/10. The good news for the Oilers, at least as far as a potential tank job goes, is that both of their goaltenders have looked shaky. The even better news is that both are UFAs this summer, so they’re not committed to … (checks earpiece) … they what? Oh. Oh, no.
Motivation: 3/10. The Oilers know a thing or two about tanking. But right now, what they know is that they don’t want to tank. They’ve got an interim GM auditioning for the full-time job and a season-long insistence that it’s playoffs or bust. If anything, they’re probably buyers.
Tank potential total: 17/30. If things got really bad, sure, maybe they take a knee. But right now, they’re looking to get better, not worse. (And besides, they’re the Oilers – they don’t need the odds to be in their favor to win a draft lottery.)
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Heading into the 2016-17 season, there was something odd going on with the NHL's 30 teams. For the first time in years, everybody was trying to win.
That sounds like it should be standard operating procedure, but it's not, at least in today's NHL. In recent years, a handful of teams have clearly gone into each season with the intention of losing. Oh, the league swears that tanking never happens, and you're supposed to use terms like "strategic rebuild" in polite company, but fans know better. With surefire franchise players like Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews waiting for whichever team could secure the top pick in the last two drafts, some clubs were more than happy to camp out in the cellar and improve their lottery odds.
But not this year. This year, everyone came into the season looking like they were actually trying. It was kind of nice.
It was also two months ago. A quarter of the way into the season, it's becoming clear that some teams just aren't as good as they'd hoped to be. And it won't be long before the NHL's tank brigade starts to appear, engines revving as the race for Nolan Patrick begins.
So today, let's try to answer the question: Which NHL franchise is most in need of a good ol' fashioned rebuild?
Clearly, we don't need to do this for everyone. We can eliminate any team that's already contending, or reasonably close to it. That's a tricky thing to define, but let's go with this: Any team that's won a division title or been to a conference final over the last two seasons is considered a contender, and we won't worry about them hitting the reset button any time soon. That knocks 11 teams off the list.
We're also going to rule out a few teams that are already rebuilding, or were very recently. That means Buffalo, Toronto, Arizona and Edmonton are all out; nobody expects them to start over again so soon. And of course, we're not going to worry about the expansion Golden Knights, since you have to build something before you can rebuild it.
As it works out, that leaves us with 15 teams, or half of the current league. That seems about right. So let's start with the teams that are in the best shape and count our way down to the dregs as we ask the question: Is it time to tank?
The case for: They've had a disappointing year so far; after being a trendy preseason pick to contend for a Cup, they've struggled to even stay in the playoff mix.
Blame PK! Photo by Bruce Fedyck-USA TODAY Sports
The case against: They've spent years building toward contender status, and seemed like they'd arrived this year. Pulling the chute because of a tough 20-game stretch would be a classic case of overreacting to small samples. They're reasonably young, the cap situation is solid, and the prospect pipeline is already in decent shape. With Pekka Rinne having just turned 34, goaltending is going to be an issue at some point soon, but otherwise, they should be fine.
The verdict: David Poile knows what he's doing. Next.
The case for: They haven't won a playoff round since 2012, and a disappointing start to the season already has them looking like a long shot to break that streak this year.
The case against: The Flyers are a good example of a team that's spent the last few years executing a reload instead of a traditional hit-rock-bottom rebuild. They've only picked in the top ten of one of the last five drafts, but GM Ron Hextall has been building patiently and amassing good young players. Between Shayne Gostisbehere, Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny, they've already got some excellent young talent.
The verdict: Philadelphia fans aren't known for their patience, but Hextall deserves some time to see his plan play out.
The case for: In five seasons since returning to Winnipeg, they've yet to win a single playoff game. And they've been a letdown yet again this year, struggling to climb into the playoff race in a tough Central Division.
The case against: They're already the league's youngest team, with a stocked pipeline that had some experts handing them future Stanley Cups—and that was before they added a legitimate blue chip stud in Patrik Laine. If anything, they're one of the teams that might want to be moving picks and prospects to make a leap right now.
The verdict: Hope can only sustain you for so long, and at some point soon, all that future potential has to start translating into something in the present. If it doesn't, that will fall at the feet of coach Paul Maurice, or maybe even GM Kevin Cheveldayoff. But a rebuild? Not for a while yet.
It’s been an ongoing debate in the league for years, one that peaked last season and is resurfacing now as the regular season winds down. The logic is fairly simple: If a team has already been eliminated from playoff contention, then tanking – losing as many games as possible in hopes of landing a better draft pick – starts to look like an attractive strategy. And it’s one that several teams around the league sure seem to be embracing, often with the full support of their fans.
To be clear, players don’t tank. We’re not talking about teams shooting the puck into their own net, or otherwise intentionally making a mockery of things; hockey players are a proud bunch who don’t take being embarrassed kindly. And besides, no grizzled veteran is going to go out and lose on purpose just so some hotshot kid can come in next year and take his job. No, tanking comes from up above – from the front office that assembles the roster, and who have the ability to ensure that the players who do take the ice have as little chance as possible.
There are various ways that a GM could embrace the tank. They can keep top young talent stashed in the minors. They can shut down any productive player who suffers a minor injury. The most obvious step is to trade away as much veteran talent as possible, especially in the days leading up to the league’s trade deadline. That’s become an annual tradition, as the league’s worst teams open up the storefronts, offering reinforcements to the league’s better teams in exchange for draft picks or prospects. It’s a smart move, a struggling team’s best chance to stockpile assets for the future. But if done right it has the added benefit of weakening the current roster for the stretch run. And it can be taken to extremes – last year, the Sabres traded away both their goaltenders.
With the playoff race coming down to the wire and the battle for top seeding in each conference raging on, the most anticipated game on last night’s schedule may have been the one between the two worst teams in the league. The Coyotes and Sabres met in a rematch of last week’s showdown, one that ended with Sabres fans cheering an overtime goal against their own team.
All of that is ridiculous, and it’s a situation the NHL had to know was coming. By going with a draft lottery system that guarantees the last-place team a top-two pick in a draft with two franchise players, the league all but guaranteed that things would get silly as we came down to the wire. The Sabres have been widely accused of tanking their entire season to ensure they get one of those two picks, and the Coyotes have given them a run for their money by trading away just about everyone with a pulse as the season wore on. Meanwhile, fans of other miserable teams like the Oilers and Maple Leafs watch with envy, wishing their teams could drop into the race for dead last. The whole thing is a mess, and the league should be embarrassed.
But while it’s easy enough to second-guess the NHL’s handling of the situation, I’m going to invoke my long-standing rule of hockey criticism: You don’t get to complain unless you can offer up a better idea. Luckily, when it comes to assigning draft order, there are plenty of other options available to the league. Some of those involve tweaks to the current way of doing things, others offer more radical changes, and still others discard the existing system entirely and come at the problem from a whole new angle.
You won’t like every idea below, but you’ll probably think at least a few of them would be improvements over what we’re stuck with now. So here are a dozen ways the NHL could go about the business of handing out draft picks, ranked in order from the least to most disruptive.
We’ll start with the status quo. As a reminder, here’s how the system works today: All 14 teams that miss the playoffs are entered into a lottery, with the worst team getting the best shot at winning (20 percent) and the odds dropping from there. Whichever team wins moves up to the first overall pick, with everyone else slotted in based on the reverse of the final standings (meaning nobody can drop more than one spot).
And maybe that’s fine. After all, not everyone thinks the current system is a disaster. And even those who’d agree that this year’s silliness is a bad look for the league might argue that that’s mainly a result of a fairly unique set of circumstances — i.e., two blue-chip franchise players in the same draft. That’s a reasonably rare situation — the last time we’ve seen this sort of top two was probably back in 2004, when Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin came in — so maybe there’s no need to panic over a problem that won’t be anywhere near as pronounced most seasons.
Biggest advantage: It would certainly be the easiest solution.
Biggest objection: The league has already decided against this approach, as we’ll see in the next section.
What if we kept the same general idea behind the current system — a weighted lottery involving all the non-playoff teams, with the same set of odds tilted in favor of those that finished further down in the standings — but drew more than one winning number? Like, purely for the sake of argument, three?
That would mean you’d have three lottery winners, and they’d get the first three picks in the draft. Other teams could drop as many as three spots, so the team that finished in last place overall could end up picking as far down as fourth.
A system like that wouldn’t eliminate tanking, and it wouldn’t discourage fans from rooting against their own team to get better odds. But it would at least reduce the incentive to mount an all-out campaign to finish dead last, and it would prevent a situation like this year, when the reward for being terrible is a guaranteed chance to draft a franchise player.
Biggest advantage: The NHL has already decided to do it. The system I just described was approved last summer, and will go into effect next season.
Biggest objection: Other than not going far enough, the biggest problem with the league’s new system is that the NHL didn’t implement it for this season. That was understandable — you could argue that it’s unfair to shift the odds around on short notice — but in hindsight, the league should have pushed to get the change done before the offseason started. Don’t like it, bad teams? Make some moves and don’t finish dead last.
This is a relatively new idea; I saw it for the first time a few weeks ago in a post on a Coyotes blog. Essentially, you’d keep the existing system, but establish a minimum points threshold that teams would have to hit to be eligible for the draft lottery. Maybe it’s a firm number, or maybe it shifts based on how the league as a whole is performing, but the core idea remains the same: If a team can’t meet that minimum threshold of on-ice respectability, then it loses its eligibility for the lottery.
Biggest advantage: Teams couldn’t blatantly tank if they knew they had to maintain some minimal degree of competitiveness. And you’d occasionally get late-season situations in which bad teams had to win their way into the lottery, which would be fun to watch.
Biggest objection: We’d probably spend the entire offseason arguing over what exactly the cutoff should be. And while we all hate tankers, sometimes a team finishes last because it really did get hit by a massive wave of bad luck; those teams could end up missing the cutoff even though they weren’t trying to tank.
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