Yeah because theres nothing players love more than losing!

Two takeaways from Tampa Vegas.

1) Tampa on a 4 game win streak against Playoff bound opponents.

2) there's gotta be a limit on how long reviews can take. Tampa iced the game in the third, Vegas took ages to decide to review, then the review took a lift time, only for the goal to stand. Vegas fans had time to almost completely empty the building before the review was done.

Better than tanking hard and then continuing to tank hard.

At least under that system, everyone is incentivized to win games down the stretch, and the only way to rig the draft order is to rig the games.

Man, why can't the Wild catch a break. We are three points out of playoffs (Thank You Tampa) and then we see Jonas Brodin go down Via a dirty play by Killorn. Why do the hockey gods hate us.

Because the sports gods hate the state of Minnesota

Real.

I am 100% behind this idea too for the draft pick.

The negatives I heard in the NHL media was that it would diminish the trade deadline; but I think the opposite is true. The teams at the bottom would become very active buyers too in order to improve their team and try and win games.

What this would do I think is reduce the chances of good players taking "bargain deals" to play for a bottom tier team hoping to get dealt at the deadline. Vets might sit out the summer free agency and then pick and choose which team to sign with after a few months of the regular season to ensure they picked a contender. This would only be a handful of players every year (ala Zach Parise) so don't think it's a big concern.

But teams like Chicago, San Jose, etc could then go after high salary guys that are "cap dumps" from contenders more often to increase their chances of winning games. It would almost be like players getting "loaned" to them. For example, Washington could have loaned Kuznetsov to San Jose at full cap hit instead of retaining and then used that cap space bring in someone like Tomas Hertl to help their own playoff chances.

Fans of tanking teamswould have renewed enthusiasm for the back half of the season and I think we would see less "strip it to the studs" rebuilds and more remodels/retool types of roster construction by GMs.

I'm in favor of anti-tanking measures but having the bottom teams fight for points further disadvantages the worst teams.

My idea is weighting lottery odds by quarter. The final quarter would have the least impact on draft position.
Prevents bubble teams or teams that are heavy sellers, from bombing down to the bottom of the pack after the trade deadline.
Teams that were bad since the first game of the season would have higher odds earned through the earlier part of the season.

Another idea is to link lottery odds with cap usage. If you didn't spend to the cap because you never intended to compete this season, your lottery odds would be lowered.
That may result in some extravagant payments on 1 year terms to avoid those lottery penalties, but it also limits how much a team is willing to sell off at the deadline without taking cap back.
Calgary was a cap team and tried to make the playoffs all season. They moved out a few players and significant salary. They already gained draft capital and prospects from those moves.
They don't need the added benefit of better lottery odds if they bottom out after the fact.

Some minor adjustments to lottery odds can be used as anti-tanking measures without completely basing draft position on post-deadline performance.
The idea has never been to reward incompetence, but to buoy teams who need the talent most.
The most evident methods of tanking are not spending competitively and unloading players so you are less able to ice a competitive team.
Those are the things that should negatively impact your lottery odds.

I wonder after a few more expansions, let’s say 5 years from now there’s 2-4 new teams:

You’re going to get more extremes on the edges. From the draft’s perspective, a few teams that can choose to really avoid the draft entirely, never intending to bring any drafted player along (Vegas except a more so) and you will also have teams on the opposite of the spectrum (Arizona whether they like it or not), where they have multiple teams worth of prospects under their control. It will be interesting to see if those teams in the fringe own their role and fully leverage the benefits of the choice, some becoming amazing at development, others at contract management.

From a selfish perspective, if I were the league, I’d do whatever I could to get big names to big markets. That’s my motivation I’d have if I adjusted the lottery. I’d flat out rig it and tell everybody they’re going to make more money my way. I’d be shocked if this wasn’t how it was as is. It’s common sense. The nhl is the circus with ice instead of elephants. They can’t let places like Chicago be money pits, they’re the income source.

The rangers, bruins, kings, Canadian clubs in general, etc need to have great players for the overall system to be healthy. If that means they strip it down like Chicago, and can get a few extreme picks in the process with assurity, fine: they can plan and get the outcome they desire.

I absolutely don’t enjoy it from the perspective of being a blues fan, but the league is currently playing games in a 2000 seat stadium, talking about substantial expansion…. Not things you’d associate with financial health.

The league should have a clear path and process to get millions of people in the largest cities to give the nhl money.

This kinda stuff doesn’t matter as much when you’re a 6 team league in interesting cities. This kinda stuff does matter when any given off season your team is offering 100 mil contracts to players.

I just don't get why people think the league will rig it for Canadian teams?

Bettman's goal was and always will be: Grow the market in the US, that doesn't happen if Canadian teams get all the star power...

That's the reason why AZ's still playing in AZ and Toronto doesn't have a second team despite them being the most valuable franchise in the NHL with 9 million people (such a huge finical opportunity)

Its really not though. The worst teams in the league are the ones that get eliminated from playoff contention first. Those first few teams have a tremendous headstart on other teams. I detest the idea of having to watch ~20 games of a team that has literally zero reason to be playing

Hobey Baker top-10

Jackson Blake, North Dakota
Macklin Celebrini, Boston University
Jack Devine, Denver
Cutter Gauthier, Boston College
Collin Graf, Quinnipiac
Lane Hutson, Boston University
Kyle McClellan, Wisconsin
Liam McLinskey, Holy Cross
Sam Morton, Minnesota State
Will Smith, Boston College

(I got 7 of 10 right…Casey, McGroarty, Brindley were the three not included…all ironically play at University of Michigan)

Blake, Celebrini, Gauthier, Graf, Smith are likely favorites

This also spreads out the excitement of the draft lottery (30 minutes even when it's dragged out as reality TV) across the entire stretch run at the end of March/early April.

Teams at the top of the standings take a much earned rest, or play for seeding, but fans of bad teams are scoreboard watching, invested in other games, just as they would if they were fighting for a playoff spot.

Anyways, take the worst team to complete a season (sorry 2019-20 Wings) in the post-lockout NHL: The 2016-17 Avalanche
Even in a very strange year, standings-wise, where the West had a large gap between the 8 playoff teams and the 6(!) non-playoff teams, so all Western teams were being eliminated unusually early, that Colorado team still picks 4th, exactly where they picked under the lottery system, even though they had a dreadful 0.219 points percentage after their elimination, the truly awful teams get eliminated early enough to accumulate enough points to pick high in the draft anyways, and there is never an incentive for the GM to tank.
Winnipeg's 6 game winning streak to end the season after they had been eliminated, instead of actively hurting them by lowering their draft pick from 8 to 13 (after lotteries and Vegas), would have given them the first overall pick. Conversely, Vancouver's 1-8-0 performance after elimination should not have helped them move up the draft board.

2017 Draft Order, Gold System, not including Vegas or lotteries in comparisons
Winnipeg, up from 11th (12 points in 6 games)
Arizona, steady at 2nd (9 points in 10 games)
Los Angeles, up from 9th (9 points in 7 games)
Colorado, down from 1st (7 points in 16(!) games)
Dallas, up from 7th (6 points in 7 games)
Detroit, steady at 6th (5 points in 6 games)
New Jersey, down from 4th (4 points in 8 games)
Florida, steady at 8th (4 points in 5 games)
Philadelphia, up from 12th (4 points in 3 games)
Carolina, steady at 10th (3 points in 4 games)
Vancouver, down from 2nd (2 points in 9 games)
Buffalo, down from 5th (2 points in 5 games)
Tampa Bay, steady at 13th (2 points in 1 game)
Islanders, steady at 14th (2 points in 1 game)

🎯

Very well said, I get people's hesitancy about the PWHL draft system because it's such a large departure from the system we've all grown accustomed to, but it's clearly the superior way of doing things.

The PWHL rules ruleset is so so good

Chris Simon is another example of why we need to stop complaining about the lack of physicality today compared to the 90s or something

I get big hits can make for exciting television but I feel that we’ve forgotten that the health and wellbeing of the athletes always come before our entertainment

Athletes getting CTE is one of the reasons ( but definitely not the only one), why I would not care if fighting and big hits left the game

Its time for us to confront the uncomfortable truth about the impact of those hits

Edit: I mean we’re 100% late on this but the point still stands

Gonna be very interesting to see now that Rempe got suspended will NYR still see value in him

As I think now that he got caught and they dealt with him his time may soon be up. Cause before it was like hey flatten this guy or that guy or get in a fight. He's fought all the tough guys and has been laying out hits that have got him thrown out twice.

Any more of that will become problematic now as hes got a record with DOPS so he does more charges or big hits will = longer suspensions

Hes been HS what should have been his first game back so it may be a sign

Vegas defense looked slow!
Still tough to bet against them being a playoff threat mind you...
However, in that game they seemed so averse to getting burned by TBL speed/transition - that they literally backed into their goalie several times, thus leaving the SLOT Area Wide Open!

Hey Vegas --- > GAP-UP!

They put all their pennies on their forecheck. And when it paid off it was tenacious. Once Tampa beat F2 they were off.

one game sample but matthews and domi have been looking really good tonight - both have 4 point games

hopefully they keep them together and run marner on a separate line.

"Big hits" are not an issue. Hits to the head and constantly fighting big honkin' dudes the size of moose are the issue.

Well said... NHL gotta do something about Hits to the head though

They do its called suspensions or a game misconduct

Though, having an ex enforcer like Parros as the head of the department of safety isn’t a great idea