I'm going to give the new Blogger interface a whirl today with some meanderings about the NHL Draft lottery last night. Although it means my beloved Montreal Canadiens will PROBABLY have a 12.5 percent chance of winning the lottery (aka Alexis Lafreniere), I'm in the camp with Brian Burke thinking my namesake from the Bettman branch of the United Gary's of the World, screwed this up.
Burke believes in the lottery. The worst should draft first. Or close to it. He thinks a lottery is okay ... providing there are no outside interlopers. Like the mystery team, still to be determined after the play-in round of the playoffs, commencing some time between now and the end of everything. Might be the worst of those teams, my Habs, or the best of those teams, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Heck, it could even be the horrible local team around these parts, the Toronto Maple Leafs. Ugh! No, make that QUADRUPLE UGH!!!!
I'm hardly an Ottawa Senators fan. Still think the idea that they wear a centurion on their chest is REALLY STUPID. But I grew up in a family that grammatically didn't shudder supporting the Maple Leafs. Took me till grade TWO before I realized what a bobo that was. But I would have liked the Senators to draft one-two, take Lafreniere and Tim Stutzle, leaving Detroit, hopefully, with Quinton Byfield. Keep all the studs in Montreal's division cuz I like watching great hockey players. Except in the Blue of the Maple Leafs. And really, not that fond of the other blue team, the Tampa Bay Lightning. Or the Rangers. They wear blue too. Hmmmmm, a journey of self discovery just found a profound place. Yep, no blues in hockey. Although, I have to admit, sorta liked the St. Louis Blues ever since their inception.. Glenn Hall, three Plagers and the best uniform not worn in Chicago. Montreal's third, if you are wondering.
Where was I? Meandering, that's right. Back to the lottery.
All pro sports leagues are struggling with the lottery. You have to do things to prevent squads tanking in the hopes of landing the Next Great Hope. Thus was born the lottery. The lotteries used to be one ball/envelope/whatever, but have mostly become three chances at the winning ticket. And in the time of Covid19, it's become two lotteries in one, an NHL invention. And it is a bad scheme made very much worse by the fact that the worst fears were realized. NOW, we have eight to TWELVE teams potentially thinking of TANKING. You know, the idea the lotteries were invented to STOP!!! Habs stars were already thinking of not playing. If the squad gets down two, where's the strength of resolve for them to go for a triple upset and win three straight elimination games in a row??? Just to play Boston and face the shame of losing to the Black and Gold. Hold on, maybe it's blue AND black? Have to add that to the pondering list.
Here's two ideas for my fellow Gary to ponder for the next NHL Lottery season. Let the losers EARN the top pick. Think of it as an in-season tournament of equals. On the day AFTER the team is eliminated from the playoffs, the team gets to start earning points in the Draft Tournament. Obviously, the worse teams will start accumulating points earlier than say, the Habs, who rated to finish as the ninth team to enter the pool, maybe with only two or three games left on the schedule. Might even finish the Draft Tournament with ZERO points. Tied with, say, Carolina. But Ottawa and Detroit might have a dozen points, having started earning them a month before. If two or more teams tie in the Draft Tournament, you break the tie in reverse order of where they would have finished in the overall standings. And the Draft Tournament ONLY dictates the order of the first round of the upcoming Draft of Eligible Juniors. After the first round, strict adherence to the reverse Regular Season standings.
What else would change in this system??? Glad you asked. No more selling off of players that might help YOUR TEAM be competitive in the Draft Tournament. If it's a good deal, go ahead. But no more fourth to sixth defenceman suddenly becoming eighth defencemen on playoff-bound teams. No more getting sixth and seventh round picks in the future for them. If a team comes around and offers you a boatload for your soon-to-be free agent centre, you weigh what that guy could help you with in the Draft Tournament and what the boatload could do for the GM that gets hired after you're fired after the season. And if you think it's a good HOCKEY trade, you take the boatload and wish your successor well, having done him a solid. (I HATE, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HATE the buyout crap that goes on in the NBA. I'd want this Draft Tournament for the NBA more than any sports league.)
Yeah, Trade Deadline Day might be a REAL downer with all the semi-unknown names no longer switching around to give the two hundred commentators something to yak about. But the real movements would be dissected with much more intensity merely for the fact that it's impact on TWO events would be that much more to talk about. Less chaff and more wheat. And imagine a late-season game between Detroit and Ottawa NOT being a tank fest, but a playoff-intesity match to see who drafts first ... and lands Lafreniere!!! You want the WHOLE season to mean something. The WHOLE season to have value with NO meaningless games. The WHOLE season to consider when moving players. NO MORE letting players BLACKMAIL you into buyouts on their terms, maybe for a savings of a few thousand dollars in savings. The players would play for SOMETHING. Maybe not a title (of which one or two of the moving players would earn, the rest WILL FAIL). But SOMETHING.
By the way, the idea is not original to me. Just repeating it since it seems to have faded from view over the last little while.
My other idea is not original either. It has it's origins in the long gone early years of the ... NHL Lottery. One ball, one team, one chance to move up by as many as three spots. If, say the tenth place team wins, it gets draft slot seven. Lottery done. Or at least that was HOW IT USED TO BE.
So, revive the same idea. But with the understanding there's three numbers coming out of the magic ball machine now. Place the Too Good to Luck Into Top Spot bar where ever you want. I think Burke wants it at five, with NO CHANCE for teams higher than that. I say, put the bar at five, to resolve Burke's biggest complaints and allow the first number to move up three spots or less, the second one two spots and the last one, well, you guessed it, one spot.
So, let's go through the repercussions this would have on this year's bifurcated snafu. The To Be Lucky team that sits above the bar at five, gets to move up THREE spots from nine to six. Los Angeles with the second number goes from four to two and Ottawa goes from two forward to ONE, leapfrogging Detroit in doing so (with their San Jose pick). The draft now goes Ottawa, Los Angeles, Detroit, Ottawa ... with the Lucky team getting six. The rest of the draft fills in around the lottery winners. That's ONE way to look at the results of the lottery.
Maybe, we stick with the ABSOLUTE top picks in play. Mystery team still only does the nine to six move because of the bar rule, limiting teams HIGHER than that to a three-spot jump. (And let's say the winner IS the nine pick originally, regardless of whether they were the nine going into the lottery). But give LA the top pick thanks to getting the next most golden number. And Ottawa gets two, cuz that's the best of what's left. Hmmm, LA, Ottawa, Detroit, Ottawa. Better than the actual lottery. Not as good as the play-in Draft Tournament.
Last refinement that will bug Burkie but might appease the lords of the NHL in my imaginary turning back of the clock to before my fellow Gary hatched this plan. Give the mystery team OR teams, the slots STARTING right behind the bar. Sixth through eighth would be the best available starter spots, but the three-spot jump would come from their position POST bar. In my scenario with only ONE golden number to a mystery team AND that golden number being triple gold, the draft order in my scenario would be LA, Ottawa, Mystery team, Detroit, Ottawa. Burke would HATE, absolutely HATE a team like Pittsburgh lucking into a Byfield or a Stutzle after choking against Montreal, but c'est la vie. Maybe moving the bar back to six works well enough for Burke. SOOOOOO many drafts are top three drafts when it comes to franchise altering players, that I think six is the right number. Negotiations start on the left.
An adjunct to why the draft lottery has failed in this wacko pandemic-driven year is that the mystery team is going to be one of the play-in series' losers with EACH team getting equal odds, supposedly to stop tanking. Every team has an equal shot. And in a five-game series, a hot goalie means a good team might very well 'earn' the one and eight shot at Lafreniere. Ridiculous. It's why Carey Price is such a pivotal player in making this Lottery scheme fraught with danger. Imagine Pittsburgh with Lafreniere on a rookie-scale contract for the next three years???? Or just as bad, the scheme could very well hand Les Habitants the next great French Canadian player. Think some fans will yell "FIX!!!" Ummm, sure. But a man can dream, can't I??
It's hard to screw up an idea meant to help the poor (in terms of talent) by potentially adding the Next Great Hope to a team that was in contention for a title all season long. Just after a bad two week stretch. The NHL has succeeded in failing all logic. Gary ... Bettman, you need to step up and prevent future screw-ups. Our name demands better.
