[Harry Lime]

I think that the point that the OP is trying to make, is that we have all seen a player take a team on his back for one game and will a win into existence. Very few players are capable of doing this multiple times during a season, and those are your Lemieuxs and Haseks. Gretzky was capable of doing this at a higher rate than anyone who has ever played the game, and no one is going to get close to that kind of impact from one player, probably ever again.

Personally, I think that there are two reasons for the tanking in today's game. The first is that desperate teams need something to engage their fans. When you are horrible to warrant a first overall selection, there is a real danger of losing a chunk of your fan base. And if you are in a non-traditional market or have hurt relations with that base, this is a sort of hail mary pass to the endzone. The second is basketball. They have engineered the sport itself to make a number one pick something of a franchise changer. The NFL fell into the well of believing that a top pick can turn around a franchise for the better part of a decade, and now are coming to the realization that football is in fact a team sport. Hockey is even more of a team sport, but basketball has cool shoes, and that mesmerizes a lot of hockey owners these days.

A top pick can get you a building block, but for every Tavares, there is a Stefan. And this is the first year Tavares wasn't playing in a vacuum. Even Snow can learn.