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Is the draft lottery working?

TheOtherOne

TheOtherOne

Registered User
Jan 2, 2010
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Motivation: As a Red Wings fan, I've experienced the entitlement of a team capable of staying competitive for over a decade, followed by the unfamiliar frustration of a team that's not used to being bad. My fanbase is split between those [rightfully] wanting to win games because of pro sports' competitive spirit and pride, and those [rightfully] wanting to tank for the chance at a better future. Notice I called both sides right: I don't blame the fans for their divide, but the system creates it nonetheless.

Purpose of the lottery: I think the draft and lottery have a couple purposes and I want to analyze whether it's accomplishing them.
1: Distribute top talent fairly to all teams
2: Create parity by making the worst teams better
3: Discourage tanking

Odds: What I've been hearing a lot lately is "you NEED a top 3 drafted player to compete for a Cup." I'm going to accept that premise without questioning it to simplify things. But it's also important to remember that a top 3 drafted player is obviously not sufficient by itself- you need quality depth and support.

Lottery odds are, for the last place team for example, 18.5%, 16.5%, 14.4% for 1st, 2nd, 3rd pick. Added up, that's 49.4% chance at a lottery pick.

The key is that since it's a probability, it doesn't really make sense to look at a single year. It's 50/50, you might win it or you might not. But probabilities work for averaging over time. So the important number is 1/49.4%, which means the last place team will win a top 3 lottery pick on average once in 2.02 years.

Do this math for all positions, and we see it will take, on average,
23334455691012152030
[TBODY] [/TBODY]
years for a team in a given position to get a lottery pick.
** This is the main point of the thread. I think this is a much more useful number to look at than anything else, because it breaks the lottery down and simplifies, with the "prize" being a lottery pick, what it takes to win in terms of time spent as a losing team.

Additional analysis with some subjectivity...
I'm going to split non-playoff teams into "bad" 1-7 and "bubble" 8-15.

- The lottery has been this way since 2016, and we've seen wins by #13, #8, and #12. So out of 9 potential lottery picks, 3 were won by bubble teams. We can see it in the odds and we've seen it happen in reality. When we talk about teams refusing to tank and staying a bubble team forever- such a team will get a lottery pick, on average, once in 14 years, while staying in the better half of non-playoff teams.

- For bad teams, tanking, or losing a game on purpose, has the potential of changing the expected value by 1. In a given year, it's a crapshoot (out of those 9 potential lottery picks, only 2 were won by bottom 3 teams). But as far as the year-to-year average goes, it doesn't matter much if you're dead last or 4th to last. If you're a bad team for 5 years you should get a lottery pick regardless of your specific standing.

- The way I see it you can rebuild one of two ways. 1: You can have a bad team with no depth, finish in the bottom half of non-playoff standings, and take on average 3 years to win a lottery pick. Then take several(?) more years to build the surrounding depth necessary to compete for a cup. 2: You can have a bubble team with decent depth but lacking high end talent, finish in the top half of non-playoff standings, and take on average 14 years to win the lottery. From this it seems like method 1 is a bit faster, but there is a lot of fuzziness because no matter which way you choose, everything has to go right. I'd like to encourage method 2 (i.e. discourage "tanking" even more), but maybe the lottery odds need to be adjusted some more for that to happen.

Ok I already spent too much time on this so go ahead hfboards tear it apart if you want.
Click to read more...
 
Kaapo Cabana

Kaapo Cabana

Next name: Admiral Kakkbar
Sep 5, 2014
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Philadelphia
BPD said:
Premise is nice, but your n is literally 9.

You're operating under the assumption that the distribution is not going to skew toward outliers early. 13 and 12 winning one of those spots twice in 9 is certainly unexpected, it's not unusual.
Click to expand...
This is a very good point

also, the aim of the Lottery is to reduce teams intentionally putting out bad rosters in order to get a better draft position. Because we don't know if any teams would have operated differently had the draft been strict reverse order, we cannot measure its efficacy.

BUT

Just because you can't measure its efficacy doesn't mean its not effective. Being at the bottom of the league is less of a meal ticket than it was before. in theory, this should discourage tanking.
 
bossram

bossram

Registered User
Sep 25, 2013
16,654
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Victoria
oXo Cube said:
It hasn't prevented a single team from entering a rebuilding period and it has screwed over multiple teams that are/were legitimately bad and need the most help.

So no, it isn't working. It's making things worse.
Click to expand...

Yet people didn't like the old system because the same teams (EDM) kept getting 1st overalls.

The point of the more evenly distributed lottery is to allow for rebuilding, but discourage outright tanking a la the 2014-15 Buffalo Sabres' McDavid quest. If people thought the team in dead last needed the most help, and deserved the first overall, then the system should never have changed. But it did, because everyone got pissy over Edmonton.
 
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chi777

chi777

Registered User
Feb 23, 2006
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I think it's a disgrace. I have a feeling when execs from the NFL watch this they fall out of their chairs laughing.

It should just go back to drafting players in the order of the standings. Worst drafts first, and so on.

This tanking concern is so overblown it makes me sad.

When you're a team, with a bunch of aging vets, on the downswing, there's two ways to handle it.

You can hang on to those vets and wait for them to leave on their own, like Detroit. In this case you end up getting nothing for them when they retire.

Or you can trade them off and hope to get some assets for them before they hang 'em up. Like Buffalo tried to do, but failed miserably.

Either way, both end up at the bottom of the standings and neither should be punished for being terrible.

This whole lottery thing is a travesty.
 
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Pi

Pi

Registered User
Nov 16, 2010
48,944
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Toronto
Yes, it's working. It deters tanking. Any team that misses the playoffs can win it but you aren't guaranteed a top 2 pick just because you finished last.

If you draft well...you can get good players anywhere in the draft. Islanders got Barzal, Boston got McAvoy and Pastrnak, Detroit got Larkin...all great players, all after the top 10 picks in the draft.
 
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oXo Cube

oXo Cube

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Nov 4, 2008
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bossram said:
Yet people didn't like the old system because the same teams (EDM) kept getting 1st overalls.

The point of the more evenly distributed lottery is to allow for rebuilding, but discourage outright tanking a la the 2014-15 Buffalo Sabres' McDavid quest. If people thought the team in dead last needed the most help, and deserved the first overall, then the system should never have changed. But it did, because everyone got pissy over Edmonton.
Click to expand...

Yes.

I'm saying that non-Edmonton GMs throwing a hissy fit over a small sample statistical outlier of Edmonton wins was stupid and has made things worse for everyone.
 
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Bramskii

Bramskii

Registered User
Jul 23, 2007
20,485
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Toronto
ibleedkings said:
Hell no it’s not working. The Kings were completely ****ed last night!
Click to expand...
I'm sure if the Kings won the lottery, you'd have a different opinion...

In fact, the only people pissed about it are the ones who's teams fell back a few spots. This is how a lottery works people. Everyone was asking to have a system in place that wouldn't encourage tanking, and now that it's finally here, people want to revert back.
 
Rangers79

Rangers79

Registered User
Aug 10, 2012
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New Jersey
Not that the Kings tanked intentionally, cause I don't think they did, but I'm fine with some teams who tank intentionally or are run like crap not getting rewarded for that. I mean I could be wrong about teams tanking intentionally but it certainly seems that way
 
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Flowah

Registered User
Nov 30, 2009
10,249
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You guys call it tanking. I call it rebuilding. Most of the time they look identical.
  • What do you do when you rebuild? You stockpile picks and prospects.
  • How do you do that? You trade players.
  • What kind of players do other teams want? The good ones.
  • What does that do to your team? It makes it suck more.
And honestly, who cares if Edmonton got all those 1sts. They still suck hardcore. What good is 1OA if you still suck?

I feel like they changed the system because it didn't seem "fair" that Edmonton got 1OA so many times, without considering that it didn't really help them that much. And they've had to trade away good players because you can't afford to keep all your 1OA players when it's time for them to get paid.
 
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New Jersey

New Jersey

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Sep 7, 2009
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Capture nico.JPG
 
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ibleedkings

ibleedkings

Rob Fake
Jul 19, 2004
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Palpatine said:
I'm sure if the Kings won the lottery, you'd have a different opinion...

In fact, the only people pissed about it are the ones who's teams fell back a few spots. This is how a lottery works people. Everyone was asking to have a system in place that wouldn't encourage tanking, and now that it's finally here, people want to revert back.
Click to expand...


I’d be a lot happier that’s for sure.
 
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