The value of the multi-year tank is on display this SCF

[TooManyHumans]

I mean for every Tampa or Colorado there's a St Louis or Vegas.

The Oilers show that it doesn't necessarily work just as much as they show it does.

If you get to go first when there's a Kane, Stamkos, MacKinnon or McDavid available it's all good, but when the names are Nugent-Hopkins, Hischier or Lafrenière you have to be able to build around them even if you get a pretty good player. Same as for every GM in the league in other words.

And pray you don't get a Daigle or a Yakupov.

Oh, tanking definitely does not always work, but being mediocre year after year pretty much never works.

 

[bb_fan]

Doesn't matter if the tank is on purpose or by happenstance. Should also add it's really about having high picks, and theoretically you can be not that bad and more mediocre and still pick 1st or 2nd due to lotto balls. Basically, picking high matters a lot, no matter how you do it. Detroit tanked harder than anyone when Yzerman took over... but they lost the ping pong ball game and those Drafts don't look amazing. That's how it goes.

yes it does.

One implies intention (see Chicago and Bedard) and the other implies sucking despite trying to win.

 

[Yultron]

Florida also has 3 of the top 4 picks on their team in Aaron Eckblad , Sam Reinhart who went 1-2 in the 2014 draft and Sam Bennett who went 4th.

The best player in that draft went to Edmonton 3rd overall in Leon Draisaitl.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

The Oilers have never tanked.

Disagree....Oilers were definitely tanking in 2009-10 in order to secure Taylor Hall
after that, however, they tried to win but management was so incompetent they continued to lose

Chiarelli was a bad GM but he was better then Tambo and MacT...plus his drafting was good

 

[Gorskyontario]

Exactly, hence the post. Some guys like Gorsky are having trouble understanding it, but that's on them, not me.

You're a right. I don't understand your post because it makes less than zero sense, somehow.

 

[Cup or Bust]

Disagree....Oilers were definitely tanking in 2009-10 in order to secure Taylor Hall
after that, however, they tried to win but management was so incompetent they continued to lose

Chiarelli was a bad GM but he was better then Tambo and MacT...plus his drafting was good

I disagree about 09-10. They didn't sign Khabibulin and get Pat Quinn to coach the team to tank. Khabibulin, Souray, and Hemsky were injured for most of the season. The Oilers actually had a good start to the season. They were trying to win that season but it went of the rails.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

I disagree about 09-10. They didn't sign Khabibulin and get Pat Quinn to coach the team to tank. Khabibulin, Souray, and Hemsky were injured for most of the season. The Oilers actually had a good start to the season. They were trying to win that season but it went of the rails.

but that's when they decided to tank, due to injuries

team didn't win a single game in January that year the opposite of this year

then sold off some d-men for picks (and a broken Ryan Whitney)

 

[ijuka]

So tank for 4 years and hope you might be good in a decade? How many people had Oilers as the favorite to win anything the last few years, even with having two of the best players in the world?

Look, that's not through the fault of having two of the best players in the world. That's because the rest of the team is built rather poorly.

This thread is about the merits of multi-year tanking.

 

[Cup or Bust]

but that's when they decided to tank, due to injuries

team didn't win a single game in January that year the opposite of this year

then sold off some d-men for picks (and a broken Ryan Whitney)

We have different definitions of tanking. Trying to win but being an awful team and then trading certain assets at the trade deadline when your team has no chance to compete for that season is not what I consider tanking.

 

[SullivanT]

Top 5 picks of teams that won Stanley cup. Op went back 14 years on Oilers picks so I kept it relevant and used that criteria relevant to when said team won the cup. Top 5 picks

Vegas is hard because they haven't been around long enough and made some stellar deals in expansion draft that gave them alot of ammo for blockbuster trades.
Hanafin
Eichel
Fluery
pietrangelo
Pretty sure all top 5 picks
Also circumvented cap

Colorado
Mackinnon
Makar
Landeskog
Byram
Duchene
Top 5s


Tampa
Drouin
Hedman
Connely
Stamkos
Pretty sure those were top 5 picks just going by memory i couldnt get their draft history page to load so don't hate too much on spelling or if they weren't but I'm pretty sure they were. Circumvented cap as well

St Louis
pietrangelo
Johnson
Outlier with only 2 top 5 on this list

Washington
Ovi
Backstrom
Alzner

Pittsburgh
Whiteny
Malkin
Crosby
Stall
Fluery

Chicago
Kane
Toews
Barker


So if you really consider it then almost every year in the scf you can say that multiple "tanks" (if you want to call it that) are on display

 

[AlexBrovechkin8]

Isn’t Florida a bad example of this? Of their most important 5-7 players, only Barkov was drafted by the team. Tkachuk, Bennett, Verheaghe, Reinhart, Forsling, Bob, Montour… none drafted by the Panthers.

 

[Lindys Lazy Eye]

Yes the success of an NHL franchise is most likely through drafting.

More at 11

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

We have different definitions of tanking. Trying to win but being an awful team and then trading certain assets at the trade deadline when your team has no chance to compete for that season is not what I consider tanking.

sure, maybe at the start of the year the thought was to "compete", but by December it wasn't in the cards so they decided to play players like Ryan Poltuny, Zack Stortini and Patrick O'Sullivan a lot

"trying to win" would imply trading for good players

 

[MadLuke]

I mean…florida made a huge move to grab tkachuk

Using a top 3 pick from their tanking year.

Has for this thread, a lot of teams have been bad at some point, that make a lot of them to win the cups in the next 10-15 years (or less) candidate.

 

[ijuka]

Isn’t Florida a bad example of this? Of their most important 5-7 players, only Barkov was drafted by the team. Tkachuk, Bennett, Verheaghe, Reinhart, Forsling, Bob, Montour… none drafted by the Panthers.

You forgot Ekblad. Also, Lundell was drafted by them.

 

[Cup or Bust]

sure, maybe at the start of the year the thought was to "compete", but by December it wasn't in the cards so they decided to play players like Ryan Poltuny, Zack Stortini and Patrick O'Sullivan a lot

"trying to win" would imply trading for good players

The Oilers had nothing to trade for good players unless you think they should trade their upcoming draft picks to bolster a weak roster when you have 3 of your best players on long term injuries. Trying to win and being dumb are too different things. You push and take risks to win when you have the right assets and roster that is capable of winning. Not making dumb trades to try and win when your team is not good enough is not tanking, it's smart.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Isn’t Florida a bad example of this? Of their most important 5-7 players, only Barkov was drafted by the team. Tkachuk, Bennett, Verheaghe, Reinhart, Forsling, Bob, Montour… none drafted by the Panthers.

People forget Ekblad was playing 25 minutes a night and came 6th in Norris balloting on the President's Trophy Winner two seasons ago. He still occupies an important Righthanded Defenseman spot (one of the hardest things to find in Hockey) and is third in ice time for them in the postseason.

 

[Skolman]

I have zero idea why you decided to put Hall & Yakupov in this conversation, but sure.

 

[dukeofjive]

À hawks fan complaining about teams tanking on purpose to get better is funny as hell.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

The Oilers had nothing to trade for good players unless you think they should trade their upcoming draft picks to bolster a weak roster when you have 3 of your best players on long term injuries. Trying to win and being dumb are too different things. You push and take risks to win when you have the right assets and roster that is capable of winning. Not making dumb trades to try and win when your team is not good enough is not tanking, it's smart.

Katz himself wanted a re-build and stressed doing it through the draft (a la Chicago) in Feb of 2010
if that's not tanking, I don't know what is

Oilers owner Daryl Katz asks fans for patience during frustrating rebuild

We got you covered on all the latest insights, analysis and commentary on hockey games in Canada.

edmontonjournal.com

 

[Cup or Bust]

Katz himself wanted a re-build and stressed doing it through the draft (a la Chicago) in Feb of 2010
if that's not tanking, I don't know what is

Oilers owner Daryl Katz asks fans for patience during frustrating rebuild

We got you covered on all the latest insights, analysis and commentary on hockey games in Canada.

edmontonjournal.com

They tried to win from 06-10 and failed and their roster was awful at that point. They failed at getting Vanek, Heatley, They were trying to win and became awful, they couldn't sign any notable free agents, had very little assets they could trade for anything that would actually improve the team. Of course he wanted to build through the draft by 2010, they failed trying to win doing everything else and their roster was awful and both the NHL and prospect rosters were depleted to almost nothing. They didn't have much choice at that point. I still don't consider that tanking. Tanking to me was Pittsburgh when they wanted Mario Lemieux, or Toronto to get Matthews. I think The Leafs were still in a playoff spot and decided to completely run their team off the rails that season. Deciding not to make risky trades for a team that is awful and has no hope of winning anything is not what I consider tanking, so we will have to agree to disagree.

 

[drktmplr12]

what better way to form an analysis than to start with the conclusion and see what results you get

 

[WhiskeyYerTheDevils]

Teams that hit the basement don't tend to leave the basement immediately. So you'd expect them to have a few years of higher picks in relatively quick succession.

I think we're just seeing how getting multiple top 5-10 picks can pay dividends 5-10 years down the road. We've seen it with Pittsburgh, Chicago, Boston, Washington, LA, Tampa, Colorado, and now one of Edmonton / Florida. Detroit is really the only cap era cup winner who has done so without the benefit of multiple high draft picks in the preceding ~10 years.

 

[LTIR]

Contemporary Top 3 Picks for Each Team in the Finals:

Florida Panthers:

2010 - 3rd overall
2011 - 3rd overall
2013 - 2nd overall
2014 - 1st overall

4 Top Three picks in a five-year span

Edmonton Oilers:

2010 - 1st overall
2011 - 1st overall
2012 - 1st overall
2014 - 3rd overall
2015 - 1st overall

5 Top Three picks in a six-year span

The whole "tanking doesn't work!" argument always focuses on the unsuccessful rebuilds, but once again we see the familiar pattern in the Salary Cap era that this is the most reliable way to build a team with Stanley Cup aspirations.

Long-story short: if your team is no good, tank and tank hard, and don't be afraid to just keep on tanking if you don't have immediate results until you eventually do.

Sure, go ahead.. as if tanking is easy..

I have reduced good 5 to 10 years of my life suffering through the shitty years of Oilers.. Go through the pain and hope your kids enjoy the benefits.

 

[Juxta Position]

yeah but the oilers weren't tanking. Remember the " I know a thing or two about winning" press conference from Kevin Lowe at the time, or the 2 tier fan comments from MacT about fans who show up to the games and fans who don't because the team sucked and the organization was insisting they were trying to win?

those were awful years...don't forget the embarrassment of basically chasing Dany Heatley around North America and throwing Edmonton promo videos at him to get him to waive his no trade clause. So embarrassing to be an Oiler fan back then.