[stemit14]

A few things I think could improve the draft:

1. Increase the draft-eligible age to 19 instead of 18. This gives prospects a guaranteed extra year of development. Hopefully, this leads to improved drafting in general. Teams will have a better understanding of player trajectories. Also, teams who are finishing at the bottom of the league will get their NHL-ready players earlier after they have drafted them as they are likely closer to being impact-players when drafted. Might be difficult to implement this change as more players will start going to Europe to play for their draft year. Might consider some kind of “exceptional status” eligibility like they do in junior for some players - this would allow for some rare players to be drafted in their 18 year old season.

2. Have the top five picks all be lottery spots.

3. Start increasing lottery odds for teams that have not won draft lotteries but have missed the playoffs in recent years. Something like this: if a team has missed the playoffs in 4 of the previous 5 years and has not won a playoff round in that span and has not won a draft lottery spot in that span, their odds should increase to win a top 5 pick. Obviously this is a change targeted at giving the “mushy-middle” teams a better chance to win the draft and get top tier talent.

4. A team that picks 1st overall cannot pick 1st overall again for 4 years - the highest they can draft is 2nd overall. This only applies to their own pick… not a pick they trade for.

5. Teams can only pick in the top 5 a maximum of 3 times in consecutive years. On the 4th year, the highest they can pick is 6th overall.

6. Make the draft lottery after the playoffs. With everyone finished playing, teams might make trades at the draft lottery (see suggestion 7 below).

7. An interesting caveat with these pick restrictions would be that they are removed if teams trade the picks before the draft lottery. For example, if Chicago traded their first round pick next year before the draft lottery, it could become a 1st overall pick. But if they didn’t trade it, the highest that Chicago could pick is 6th overall because they already picked in the top 5 for 3 consecutive years. My hope with the restrictions being tied to the team rather than the pick would be that it incentivizes teams to trade picks for impact NHLers. If Chicago knew the highest they could draft by keeping their pick was 6th overall but they could trade it to someone and it could be a 1st overall pick for that team… wouldn’t that make Chicago more incentivized to trade that pick for help now? In this scenario, Chicago wants to sell the pick and multiple teams want to buy that pick especially since it would have a decent shot at McKenna. Imagine what a team would pay Chicago for that pick if it meant they had the best odds at winning the draft lottery in the McKenna draft.

I’m sure there are lots of holes in these changes but the ultimate adjustment I want to see is teams are incentivized to start making their teams better and get out of rebuilds faster. Try to end the long rebuild. Prospects are NHL-ready faster after they are drafted. More teams get a chance at top end talent rather than just the teams that are embarrassingly bad for long periods of time. More trades happen.