WarriorofTime
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- Jul 3, 2010
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There’s nothing wrong with the worst team getting the first pick. It ensures a healthy league so the teams that have the least have hope for the next wave into the nhl to turn things around.
The Silver Plan: A Draft Lottery Alternative
- Thread starter MarkT
- Start date
Canadienna
Registered User
Shark Finn
∀dministrator
- Nov 11, 2017
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I'm very happy to hear critiques from anyone who took the time to read my post. Your post was mostly about tanking, which wasn't mentioned a single time in my original post.
If you like I'll respond to your specific points:
"GMs of bad teams would unload good players regardless of whether their team's draft position was predicated on where they finish in the standings."
I agree. This is why I'm not too worried about my system killing the trade deadline.
"The draft lottery, for all the hate it gets, is a legitimate bulwark against open tanking."
As I discussed in another comment, it mitigates the effects, but doesn't prevent it. Either way, I think tanking is fine.
"The difference in odds between something like finishing 22nd and 27th isn't enough to justify making moves to make your team worse that you wouldn't have made otherwise."
I agree.
"Now you still have the non-lottery effects, where if you finish 32nd you're guaranteed a top3 pick, but this is an important part of parity and league dynamism."
This is legitimately one of the potential advantages of the current system over mine, but I think it would be very rare (I haven't run the numbers) for a 32nd place to team finish outside of the top 3 picks in my system. Last season would have resulted in San Jose picking 2nd after finishing 32nd.
"Basically, I think tanking is more of a "fans have poor intuition for probabilities" phenomenon than an actual hockey ops one (with exceptions), and your solution would likely result in bad teams still being bad but now missing out on a better chance to improve."
How so? The bottom 7 teams in the standings (outside Montreal) are still the bottom 7 teams in the draft in my system. This part is what made me think you didn't actually read my post. Sorry if that was an incorrect assumption.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
This is a better plan than it’s getting credit for on here.
Tearing your team down to the point of being unwatchable should not be a desirable goal. It’s bad for the franchise and bad for the league. In general, we should want to see teams attempting to compete and taking moves to try and win games.
The issue I have is that, as with any other idea, there’s always a way to game the system.
What when two teams play each other in Game 82 — winner goes to the playoffs as the lowest seed, loser gets the #1 pick? That could generate an all-time disgraceful episode.
Tearing your team down to the point of being unwatchable should not be a desirable goal. It’s bad for the franchise and bad for the league. In general, we should want to see teams attempting to compete and taking moves to try and win games.
The issue I have is that, as with any other idea, there’s always a way to game the system.
What when two teams play each other in Game 82 — winner goes to the playoffs as the lowest seed, loser gets the #1 pick? That could generate an all-time disgraceful episode.
WarriorofTime
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Never a big fan of systems designed to basically reward the mediocre teams that hit the high end of their variance "too late", as well as the other side of that.
Add that it's just logistically complicated without a major impact and questionable efficacy.
winnipegger
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- Dec 17, 2013
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A team like Nashville was supposed to be good. They ended up sucking. The top draft picks should be allocated to the teams that suck the most. No market is incentivized to lose. The lottery is a disincentive, but you also take great damage to your brand when you lose year after year. Everyone is trying to win, and the teams that consistently don't need the help of top draft picks (which aren't even a guarantee as we saw with Edmonton 2009 - 2012).
EdmFlyersfan
Registered User
Way too complex, keep it simple.
Same rules currently, but restrict how many times a team can have a first overall, second overall, etc.
Example: A team can only have:
1 first overall every 5 years
1 second overall every 5 years
1 third overall every 5 years
Etc
Puts the onus on the club to be better, and prevents what the Oilers and some other teams have done in the past. Also disperses star players throughout the league.
Same rules currently, but restrict how many times a team can have a first overall, second overall, etc.
Example: A team can only have:
1 first overall every 5 years
1 second overall every 5 years
1 third overall every 5 years
Etc
Puts the onus on the club to be better, and prevents what the Oilers and some other teams have done in the past. Also disperses star players throughout the league.
This is the fundamental problem to any draft fix for me. If that's the case, I'd prefer a system like the one we currently have where the worst teams in the league generally get the best picks the majority of the time. As we've seen in the NBA, any kind of "flattening" of the bottom of the league (either by pure lottery odds or by a system like the one proposed) doesn't discourage tanking but just prolongs it as teams have to be worse longer to actually get the player they need.
Ultimately, the real thing that will discourage blatant tanking is FOs realizing that it's very easy to be bad with good players (Nashville for example) and very hard to become good once you tear everything down to the studs (Chicago)
- Nov 11, 2017
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I appreciate that.
Question: How would it be possible for the loser in that situation to get the #1 pick? I assume you're implying that the loser just barely missed the playoffs, right? In that case, even if they banked a ton of Silver Points, there's no way they would have been low enough at game 62 for even 40 Silver Points (the max) to drop them down enough. For reference, the team with the most points last season at game 62 was Detroit with 72. Even if they got 40 Silver Points, that would have put them at 3rd overall, and that would mean them going 20-0 to end the season, and certainly making the playoffs.
WarriorofTime
Registered User
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Nashville is just more or less lucky that circumstances in the NHL (which I've pretty consistently pointed out on the Hawks board) are that there were really only 2 teams that were "tanking" this year in San Jose and Chicago (and even both of those were hoping to be better than the prior year). Basically every other team was a playoff team hoping to hang on with a core that's been successful previously, a team that's been rebuilding for a while that were hoping to come out of it, or teams kinda doing a halfway approach of at least half-heartedly trying to get into the playoffs but not pushing all in. Nobody blew up their team at the last trade deadline or during the offseason. Third to last in the entire NHL was basically guaranteed to be a bit of an "accidental tank" and yeah, someone who spent a bunch in Nashville ended up being that team.
I suspect next season will be a lot deeper of a field of "tanking" teams.
Canadienna
Registered User
Okay, sorry for assuming bad faith as well. I think your response proves that my post was relevant and a counter point to your own.
You make some leaps in logic I don't follow.
"but I think it would be very rare (I haven't run the numbers) for a 32nd place to team finish outside of the top 3 picks in my system"
I don't know why you think it would be very rare for a team that is 32nd for the first 62 games to continue to be bad regardless of whether their draft position is affected by the standings. Bad teams are bad, some of them finish strong, some of them don't.
I realize your system incorporates the game 62 standings into the final calculation, but it doesn't make sense that playing poorly for games 42-62 will help your draft position while playing poorly for games 63-82 will hinder it.
As for focusing only how fans feel about the last 20 games, I agree it would be nice to fix fans cheering for losses, but your solution would simply have them cheer for losses at a different time, and wouldn't actually change how the teams play on the ice.
I agree that having an incentive structure for fans to cheer for losses is not ideal, but it's fundamentally necessary as long as we believe in distributing draft picks to poor teams. Splitting the season in sub samples that have different impacts on draft positions doesn't actually change that.
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This is the second "too complicated" comment, so I'll try to address it more thoroughly.
The current system, which is supposedly simple, can be described as follows:
Lottery Draws: There are two draws:
- The first draw determines the team that wins the No. 1 overall pick.
- The second draw determines the team that wins the No. 2 overall pick
- Teams are assigned odds based on their regular-season standings, with the worst team having the highest odds (18.5%) and the best non-playoff team having the lowest odds (1.0%)
- Teams can move up a maximum of 10 spots in the draft order if they win a lottery draw
- Teams in slots 12-16 can only move up 10 spots, meaning they cannot secure the No. 1 pick if they win. The team with the worst record retains the No. 1 pick in such cases
After the first two picks are determined, the remaining teams are ordered based on their regular-season standings from worst to best
__________________________________________________________
Compare that to the Silver Plan:
Starting in game 63, every point a team earns is banked as Silver Points. If the team then misses the playoffs, their Silver Points are subtracted from their total points as of game 62, determining their draft position. The team with the fewest total points after the Silver Points are subtracted will draft first.
__________________________________________________________
Which of those systems is more complicated? Don't confuse unfamiliar with complex, and don't confuse familiar with simple.
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Voight
#winning
SomeDude
Registered User
You know what, I change my mind. Switch to this just so we get to watch James Duthie attempt to explain it to a viewing audience before the lottery.
SomeDude
Registered User
Do you know what’s worse for a franchise and the league? Having a team languish in 20th place for 2 decades until nobody gives a damn about them anymore.
The whole appeal of a tank and rebuild, and why fans openly cheer for it, is the end goal of winning. It is a way to still keep interest while the process is happening. If you have fans rooting to suck, they’re at least still paying attention and are emotionally invested in the team and league.
Mediocrity breeds disinterest which is worse.
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That is a fair critique. However, I'm pretty sure the math backs up the idea that even a 32 team playing poorly would likely finish with a very high draft pick. The exception would be if there were several teams clustered at the bottom, but in that case it's perfectly fair if they don't end up in the exact order they finish in the standings (as we already accept with the lottery).
I get your point here about 42-62 vs 63-82, and it does seem a bit arbitrary at first, but my reasoning on that is those last 20 games sure feel different than the middle of the season. At the start of every season there is a hope, even if it's tiny, that the team will surprise everyone and go on a magical run. Think Columbus this season potentially making the playoffs. That hope can last quite far into the season, but by the trade deadline it's generally either confirmed as genuine hope or a lost cause. That's why I put the line at the trade deadline - to make the part of the season that is most hopeless in terms of playoffs the most hopeful in terms of the draft.
So yes, this idea does not solve the issue of fans cheering against their team entirely (I don't think that's possible in any realistic system). But I think it does solve that problem at precisely the point of the season when it is at its worst (for teams that will miss the playoffs). I pointed out earlier, in the draft lottery topic a Pens fan posted "Penguins saw fit to start winning games so...yeah that sucks." - that's exactly the kind of sentiment my system would fix.
Beau Knows
Registered User
It's an interesting concept, but even after all that I'm not sure you'd 100% prevent the possibility tanking.
What if you're a bubble team, facing the prospect of getting matched up against the #1 team in the league if you manage to grab the last playoff spot. Your reward is a most likely a 4-5 game spanking. But this season ends up also being one of those once every 10-20 year drafts where the next Crosby or McDavid is available.
Wouldn't it be in your best interest to "rest" some of your "injured" players right before the last 20 games to eliminate yourself from the playoffs. Then you can use your rested squad to beat up on the basement teams that really need that next all-time great player.
Now instead of giving yourself a handful of playoff games this year, you've got the next superstar and have set yourself up to probably win multiple Cups in the next 15 years.
I think the tanking thing is basically an unsolvable problem. The most elegant solution is just to award the best picks to the worst teams. The lottery was a reasonable addition to make blatant throwing of the last few games less of an issue.
What if you're a bubble team, facing the prospect of getting matched up against the #1 team in the league if you manage to grab the last playoff spot. Your reward is a most likely a 4-5 game spanking. But this season ends up also being one of those once every 10-20 year drafts where the next Crosby or McDavid is available.
Wouldn't it be in your best interest to "rest" some of your "injured" players right before the last 20 games to eliminate yourself from the playoffs. Then you can use your rested squad to beat up on the basement teams that really need that next all-time great player.
Now instead of giving yourself a handful of playoff games this year, you've got the next superstar and have set yourself up to probably win multiple Cups in the next 15 years.
I think the tanking thing is basically an unsolvable problem. The most elegant solution is just to award the best picks to the worst teams. The lottery was a reasonable addition to make blatant throwing of the last few games less of an issue.
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Read the following in James Duthie's voice:
"Starting in game 63, every point a team earns is banked as Silver Points. If the team then misses the playoffs, their Silver Points are subtracted from their total points as of game 62. So if your team had 50 points at game 62, and earned 14 Silver Points, their new total would be 36. The team with lowest total picks first."
Sorry I guess it wouldn't be very entertaining. I think it would be way more fun watching him try to explain the lottery odds and the rules about how much teams can move up and whether teams can win the lottery in consecutive years.
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SomeDude
Registered User
Hypothetically the way to correct that is to fine (or outright strip the draft pick away from) a team that obviously tanks a game like this. In practice, unless it's absolutely blatant, it would be hard (or impossible) for the NHL to prove, if they were so inclined, that the team that loses such a game tanked the game on purpose. The NBA once fined the Dallas Mavericks $750,000 for resting starters down the stretch instead of presumably playing to win games in an effort to make the playoffs, likely as the 10th seed (or something to that effect). I don't really care for the NBA, but I don't imagine that decision was without its own controversy. Imagine the NHL deciding that a team intentionally threw game 82 and stripped them of the first overall draft pick as punishment.
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I'm not trying to prevent tanking. Tank away!
As for your scenario, I can't imagine any team doing that. What player is going to agree to be "rested" when they are in the hunt for the playoffs? And even so, if they're anywhere close to the playoff line, there's no way for them to get the #1 pick. If they win enough games to bank the necessary "Silver Points" they'd get into the playoffs instead.
Now, in that once every 10-20 years Crosby or McDavid scenario, I could see bottom teams actually loading up at the deadline in the hopes of winning enough games to earn that. But bottom teams would do crazy things in a Crosby or McDavid year regardless of the system.
Golden_Jet
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Is it a good thing or a bad thing when fans of a team are hoping their their favorite team loses? I think it's a bad thing. It's bad the for fans. It's bad for the league. It's bad for the players, who feed off crowd energy, and playing in games that matter. It leads to general disengagement for potentially half the fans in the league, with the hope that those fans will come back when things start to matter again.
