Quoting: aedoran
This is by far the most ignorant thing I've see posted on this site and if you really think it is true then you really don't have a clue. First there isn't a player in the league that would actually tank on purpose. This season will be the 4th straight season Detroit has missed the playoffs. Detroit traded Nyquist(49) and Jensen(15) at the 2019 TDL and Vanek(36) and Kronwall(27) both retired in the off season. Nyquist was 3rd in points and Vanek was 6th in points for Detroit last season. Losing two defensemen that played top 4 minutes but Kronwall was also Detroit's best defenseman and he finished 8th in points. They added Filppula(21), Erne(4), Nemeth(9) and they did get Bowey(16) in the Jenson trade but Jensen is far better defensively. So it's not that hard to see that they have far less talent this season compared to last season. Detroit already down two starting defenseman they had to deal with injuries. The four starting defensemen from the previous season and the games they've played this season Ericsson 13 games, Daley 38 games, DeKeyser 8 games and Green 48 games. Coming into this season just about every hockey analyst said Detroit was going to be bad this season and worse than last season.
Something I'd like to point out. In the 2016-17 season NJD had the 1st pick (Nico Hischier). Then in 2017-18 a trip to the playoffs and in 2018-19 NJD has the 1st pick again (Jack Hughes). While I do find it very hard to believe an NHL team would really tank on purpose. NJD over the last couple of seasons looks a lot more like a team that tanked.
1) relax lol
2) my point is the gm can step in and make a move to help the team a little bit to close the gap towards everyone else and create more parity. My whole point is there could be a threshold, maybe they sign a ufa to help, or implement a better system and coach. I proposed 50 points, how many teams havent been able to muster 50 points in 82 games? very few. Were talking about 1 -3 more wins at most in those cases, that goes a long way in parity
3) I don't think the devils tanked, I think they were very lucky and ultimately won the lottery when they werent the last place team - they were never in position to come close to not hitting a 50 point threshold. in addition the reason they were so bad is they had historically bad goaltending, i mean the guy couldnt win a game for 365 days. and with that, they still had 20+ more points than 50. so frankly you couldnt be more wrong in the comparison
edit: and i get the counter point that you are in a bad spot and dont want to spend assets to prolonge the bad times, but there are ways to achieve a level of quality on the ice that produces just 50 points that dont require completely decimating your existing assets. thats my only point, im not saying 70 points or 80, im saying 50, which is not exactly common. Thats all. Its an opinion and its certainly not ignorant. I look at it not to punish the players but to force the gm to help them.