Friedman: The top 3 picks in the draft to be decided by lottery?

[N-E-B]

I still like the idea where the winner of the draft lottery is whoever gets the most points after they're mathematically eliminated. This would give the bottom team the best chance because they would have the most games to get the draft points, and it would allow for fans to cheer for wins at the end of the year instead of not caring. Kind of like a loser playoffs.

[$ven27]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Yep. The last thing the NHL wants is Florida or the Oilers relocating. That would hurt the value of all the franchises. It's a matter of owners and GMs being ticked off that the Avs grabbed the best prospect to come along in years because of one bad season.

One bad season? I think you're forgetting they've been battling the Oilers for bottom spot in the league for a few seasons, finishing 3rd and 2nd worse twice in a 5 year span.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

Going back 5 years feels like going back too far.

Easy for a team to be terrible for 2 seasons, mediocre for 2 seasons, and then be a playoff team in the 5th season and they get another really good pick that they likely don't need.

If they're in the playoffs, they wouldn't be getting a top pick.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what Friedman is saying, the top 14 will still go to the 14 teams that miss the playoffs. They're just looking at changing the weighting of the lottery based on the performance of the non-playoff teams over the last five years (and it won't be linked to the specific teams, but the performance of the teams in each seeding over that time). So, if the Flames finish 25th, their chance of winning the lottery will be weighted to reflect the performance of the last five 25th place teams.


For example, if you look at the last full season (2011-12), Montreal finished in 28th place with 78 points; and Tampa finished in 21st with 84 points. Only six points difference in the standings (3.6% difference in points percentage), but Montreal had a 14.2% chance of winning the lottery, and Tampa only had a 2.1% chance.

The idea is to make the lottery odds more closely reflect the true difference in the performance between the teams in the standings.


If I am understanding this proposal correctly, I'm not sure how it discourages teams from tanking, or fails to reward those team that do tank.

[Bend it like Bourgeois]

^^ thanks for the explanation. I never really got it before.

It could help one problem I've always had with the lottery which is the linear odds that don't relate to anything really.

This year there will be 5 teams clearly at the bottom. Other than buffalo there is nothing to choose between them in degrees of suck. A post here, a shoutout there, separates 29-26. So it makes no sense that the 29th team would have a helluva bigger chance at the lotto than the 26th., and could finish 1-2 or maybe 3, while the 26th team has only an outside shot at 1, and will likely get 5 or 6.

If this were the norm over the last 5 years, then it really wouldn't matter where the flames, panthers, soilers, iles, and sabres finish, they'd all have a pretty equal shot at the lottery balls and picks 1-6 (I know not exactly given only 3 balls).

It might skew a team that has an unusually good or bad year for their position, but to me that's still more fair overall then the current system for setting the odds.