In general that explains the rationale of the draft fairly well. However, the Sharks dug themselves their grave on purpose in full knowledge of the fact that you can in fact pretty easily dig yourself out of it again in the NHL. It's not like they just naturally kinda got bad due to lack of resources and support like a bad European soccer team. The Sharks being this bad is part of a plan, not the failure of a plan.
The solution is the NHL going out on a limb and implementing the Gold Plan. Draft order is determined by how many points earned after being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. The worst teams would still have a leg up since they'd be eliminated earlier, but they'd still have to remain competitive enough to earn the highest pick.
They earned their only top 3 draft pick in the last 26 years when they didn't even own their own draft pick.
If it were easy to dig yourself out of the grave by tanking for draft picks Edmonton would have more than 4 series wins after drafting 1st 4 times in the last 15 years, a Toronto would have more than 1 series win in the last 7 years since winning the lottery and it wouldn't have taken Colorado a decade to make it out of the second round after winning their lottery
All this would do is guarantee the worst of the worst teams will never have the opportunity to aquire and develop high end talent and as such will never be competitive draws in their home markets, it's a non starter from a business perspective
And they're laying it all on the line now? Unless the argument is players will actually try even less, which is a big leap, I fail to see how the actual on-ice product would deteriorate (even more).
The roster has 2 reclamation project goalies, 8 bottom pair defensemen, 1 healthy top 6 forward and a coach who has never made the playoffs
"Now" in the general sense, as in, shitty teams playing in March. But your point is still taken.
It's only natural that players will mail it in to some extent when the incentives of winning aren't there (once they're eliminated from the playoffs and can't compete for a cup)
MS - wasn't the a 2015-16 Leafs a tear down rebuild? They might not have torn it down as completely as the Sharks, but the Sharks had that much less talent on the roster after trying to take one more kick at the can after a great 15-20 year run as a serious contender.
They might, but all it would mean is that undesirable and underperforming organizations would no longer have a reliable avenue to becoming competitive and would serve as fodder for the rest of the league for longer stratches of time
People can live with 'rebuilding'/tanking to a degree. If you have a team that gets blown out every night because they put a minor league product out, however, it's going to raise eyebrows.
It would effect play because the basement of the league would become so bereft of high end talent there would be 3-5 teams every year that look like this year's Sharks, the difference is they would have no avenue to escape the futility
Regardless if the picks were traded or guys that didn't end up making the NHL - the results the same - LOFT (lack of f***** talent) on the roster when those roster spots open up, which then means that a team likely tries to fill holes with overpriced UFA's, or can't let guys leave that they should because there is no one to fill those minutes.
If we're going to be snippy about it, you do grasp that there's a relative scale to teams selling off assets to rebuild vs choosing to ice an AHL roster and passing it off as an NHL product like Grier has done with the Sharks this season?
You think it will play out like it did with Tavares? I think they have a chance if they hit the UFA.
