Personally, while I would love to find a way to remove tanking from the game itself to get a higher draft pick, I don't think we simply can. Here's the problem... everyone wants league parity. And in order to do that, the worse teams need the higher draft picks in order to improve. What you are suggesting here is that for those teams eliminated from the playoffs, you get draft pick points by winning games later on and accumulating draft pick points. That is essentially removing the idea of league parity and it's rewarding the stronger non-playoff teams and it's hurting the weaker non-playoff teams. While it would be excellent for the Flames for example this year, who aren't near as bad as say the Panthers are, it would be detrimental to the Panthers... a team who couldn't win a game even if their lives depended on it.
It sucks that there is tanking in the league, but if the league wants to continue on having 'parity', we can't engage into something new that might allow stronger teams to be picking ahead of weaker teams in the draft (assuming compete level is the same).
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