How I learned to stop worrying and fix the draft
John Lofranco
April 16 2012 10:09AM
Now that the draft lottery is done with, and the playoffs have begun, talk has shifted from how the draft is broken to how the Canucks and Penguins are broken. Fair enough. But the draft system is still the same. If you believe that teams should not be rewarded for poor performance - even if there was not really any tanking this year - then you think the system needs a shake up.
The solution is out there, but it's going to take a mad scientist to come up with the right combination of give and take to make this thing some to life. Come and watch!
CHANGES
It seems to be the place of fans of non-playoff teams to look for ways to change the way the NHL is run, be it the number of points awarded each game, or engineering the way the draft order is determined. Funny that fans of playoff teams aren't too worried about these sorts of things at this time of year... Sad, they are missing out on some interesting discussion!
I think that there is an interesting and fair way to determine draft order. It is a bit of a fantasy though, as it involves quite a bit of juggling with the schedule. But I think it would be fun. Follow closely.
The first thing I would do is reduce the number of games each team plays in the regular season down to about 70 games. How you want to distribute them is up to you. One possibility is 4x14=56 in conference, and then 15 out of conference for 71, but it really depends on the impending realignment.
Sort that out.
MO GAMES MO MONEY
The main obstacle to this is of course that more games mean more money for the NHL teams. The NHL makes $1096.6 million per year in gate receipts (based on 2009-10 numbers), which works out to about $36.5 million per team, or $891,544.71 per game. So cutting 6 games would cost each team, on average $5.35 million. Of course, this is different for each team (e.g. Toronto makes over $90million at the gate, while Phoenix makes about $18million!), but looking at the average can give us an idea.
So how can we save the NHL teams just over $5 million each, to help them buy in? (I realise that there are more sources of revenue per game, but I don't have access to all the numbers, so I'm just ballparking it. Bear with me). Well here is an idea that will not only save the owners money, but improve the quality of the game.
There were 7961 man games lost to injury in the NHL this season, for an average of 265 per team.Average NHL salary is $2.4 million which is $110,564.46 per game. Players, generally, are still paid when they are on the DL. Average injury cost to an NHL team then is $29,299,581.90.
That’s almost half the salary cap! I don't have the numbers on this, but I wonder if playing fewer games in the same period of time, or maybe shorten the season by a week or two (which is normally 4-6 games) (i.e. decrease schedule density) would result in fewer injuries. If the number of man-games lost to injury can be reduced by 50 (18%) by reducing the schedule by 12 games (14%), then it would make financial sense to play fewer games.
I also think the quality of hockey would rise, if teams have more practice time and more recovery time. Again, I don't have the numbers, but this seems like basic exercise physiology. Less load=less risk of injury=higher quality performance. Someone should do a study of rates of injury vs schedule density.
So! If we can get the owners to agree to play fewer games in the season, then perhaps perhaps? Have you seen the playoffs this year? Damn skippy!.
MAKE EM COUNT
We have an appetite for more post-season games. That's how we can fix the draft system. In the two weeks that we've saved, there is time for a home-and-home, single elimination tournament among non-playoff teams, the results of which determine draft order. Win the tournament, win the first pick overall. Fans can cheer for a draft pick and wins at the same time!
Financially, everyone wins, since all 30 teams will get "playoff" revenue. Making the tournament a home-and-home (total goals or something, like in soccer) 24 extra games will be played. That's an extra $20million, or almost $1.5million per team. Add that to the injury savings, and your're good. Plus, playoff games are at a premium, so there may even be more money there.
This is, I realise, quite an elaborate plot to help make the draft order more fair. But, while the lottery is simple, it's also rewarding failure, and, even if teams don't actually tank, it's less fun for the fans to be hoping for losses than wins. This way, every team has an incentive, both competitive and financial, to win every last game.
One last point, since we are dealing with a pure hypothetical here. I would love to see the NHL go to a soccer-style relegation system. The end of season elimination tournament would be the relegation tourney as well. The top 6 teams in the AHL could then come up and replace the first 6 teams out of the elimination tournament.
That would be cool.
Or we could throw those AHL teams into the tourney, expand it, and see how they did. I can see how that might embarrass some long-standing NHL franchises and of course the issue of "farm teams" would complicate the transition. Still, it's fun to dream.
Maybe that way, Mike Zigomanis would get his shot in the NHL.
You know how bad teams can stay bad forever? By making Draft Order dependent on WINNING something.
Christ. Pittsburgh, Washington, and Chicago would still be mired in the basement of the league. Columbus would never have a shot of coming out of their slump. Going back to Pittsburgh, they might have actually lost their team in the early 2000's if not for the draft bringing them Marquee players to market to the fans.
The Rich get Richer, the poor get poorer under your new approach. Or at very least, the poor get poorer.
The Draft is not broken. It works to create competitive balance. It isnt a reward for failure. It's a measure to prevent perpetual failure. For the most part it's done a solid job when combined with competent leadership.
A simpler system was presented at this year's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
The full details are here, but basically what would happen is that once teams were eliminated from the playoffs they'd start collecting points toward draft position. The worst teams would be eliminated first, and thus have more time to collect points. Every team would have an incentive to win every game.
No more articles by Leafs fans!!!
The big problem with a playoff round is that the NHL cares a lot more about competitive balance than it does about rewarding winning.
With a post-season draft tournament, teams that stink will probably lose (just like they do during the regular season). Then they won't get a top draft pick. Without a top draft pick, they will continue to lose. They'll keep missing out on top draft picks. Pretty soon, instead of a team like Pittsburgh returning to form, they're relocating to Kansas City.
The NHL doesn't like relocation. They like market stability. From their perspective, it's far better to ensure bad teams get good players than it is to ensure every team does its darndest over the season's last 10 games.
@Godot
Players WILL go where the opportunity is. The opportunity to live in large metropolitan cities, the opportunity to play in places with no State Tax, the opportunity to play close to the family, the opportunity to play on contenders, the opportunity to play with friends, etc.
Lots of opportunities to overcome when you have the sh*ttiest team in the league and no talent to speak of coming up in the system like the Oilers did pre Hall. Try pitching that to a hypothetically Unrestricted Free Agent Taylor Hall.
Tambellini- "We're terrible, live in a frozen waste land, have almost no prospects, just hired a geriatric as our coach, but you will make the team and get the rookie max."
Hall- "Actually Nashville can fit me under the Cap and I'll pay way less taxes, its warmer, Shea Weber just sent me the Keys to his 3rd home, and I can make the playoffs."
Tambellini- "We have the Octane..."
how long before everyone starts complaining about the 17th overall team getting the #1 pick 3 years in a row.
In the 30 balls for the 30th place team model, the last place team only has a 6% chance of getting the number 1 pick and a 94% chance of not getting it. Odds are the 30th place team will not get a very good pick and hence continue to be a 30th place team for years. Until there is evidence that teams are "tanking" on purpose, I don't see a need to change the current format.
@Godot10
How do you figure that? Is this some kind of excercise in The Free Market that you think will work out positively?
Will the Invisible Hand of the hockey Market magically even everything out the same way de-regulating electricity has made my Power Bill smaller (tongue firmly in cheek)?
The Draft helps clubs overcome barriers like City Location, Payroll, and On-Ice performance when building a team. Everybody is equal at the draft. You take a player, his rights are yours whether you're Columbus or New York it doesnt matter. If player X wants to play in the NHL soon then 9.5/10 times he's reporting to the club that drafted him.
Getting rid of the draft would be potentially catastrophic to the parity in the league.
~Hey let's privatize the universal health care system and eliminate social safety nets such as welfare! Those bums with no money don't deserve cancer treatment anyway, since they were probably just tanking their lives this year just to get a new pair of lungs!~
I like the Draft Tournament", but I doubt that relegation is practical. Still, not bad for a Leafs fan. ;)
That's just the right amount of violence in the games played so far.
This sounds similar to Bill Simmons' "Entertaining as Hell Tournament", only the prize is the number 1 pick, instead of the 8th playoff seed.
The major problem is that this issue would probably have to be collectively bargained between the owners and the players. As it would likely also lead to a reduction in players salaries either directly (we pay less as you play less), or indirectly (as a percentage of revenue), it might take more than promising players a little bit less wear-and-tear on their bodies to get them on board.
And does it make sense to have a home-and-home for one tournament while having a "best of seven" for another tournament, in the same league?
Also, in regards to revenue, from what I understand, a team tends to lose money when it has a playoff round and doesn't advance (travel, bonuses, stadium costs, and so forth), so I'm skeptical about the math.
I'm not saying that you idea is incorrect, but I believe that there's major holes that would have to be plugged up before it could be viable.
I see two flaws...
1) "the two weeks you save" what do the playoffs teams do during this time? Or why can't this elimination tournament happen as the same time as the NHL playoffs?
2) This sort of elimination systems favours the stronger non-playoff teams. The teams that are weaker and have trouble attracting free agents on their own will truly become 2nd tier teams in this system. Rather than a team hitting rock bottom and knowing there is some light at the end of the tunnel, they can now hit rock bottom and keep on digging. That's not exactly a good formula for keeping bums in seats for struggling franchises.
I always thought the answer that would solve a lot of these issues would be to base player salaries on performance... no gauranteed salaries... that would create more incentive for all players and teams to do well in the regular season.
As far as the draft is concerned... the only thing I would change is to limit the first 5 picks to be un-tradable. So a team picking in the top 5 would be forced to commit to that player through their entry-level contracts..
Also, add a rule that no team can have the first overall pick for more than one year in a row.. (Edmonton! cough! cough!)
If your team picks first overall, the following year you get bumped back to 30th no matter where you finished in the standings!!
This makes no sense to me, and i'll tell you why.
1) Shortening the season only to take on a playoff scenario would lead to just as many injuries imo. Playoff situations are tough on players: look at how things have gone so far this year.
2) I am not convinced that the money lost in concession (going to the governing party of the arena and/or the owner of the team) and ticket sales (going to the NHL) is even remotely made up for in this additional playoff tournament you've suggested. Take, for example, any team(s) that flunk out right away. 4-7 games played (in a best of 7 scenario), 11-12 games missed on the short season. Perhaps I've misunderstood a key point here but as it stands in my head, this wouldn't be favored by the rich fat man in the press box.
3) The idea of having a playoff scenario for the draft doesn't sit well with me. I don't mind the worst place team having the best chance at the #1 overall. If the system you presented had columbus coming last in the regular season and last in the draft playoff, year after year they would not be able to draft anything of value to help dig themselves out of the gutter. I fear that this model you've suggested only benefits teams like TO or Calg - people who are near misses. The teams who near miss have an option: rebuild. The teams who are already at the bottom have no options: cannot draft anyone good and they cannot trade for anyone good (afterall, who wants to play for a last place team so they can lose for the next decade).
I quite like the draft lotto system as it stands. It's a numbers game that is also heavily padded by how poorly a team does in the regular season. Should a team decide to tank so they can draft #1 overall, FINE, let them do it. The consequences of purposely sucking are far greater than having Yakupov on your right wing somewhere.
The crappiest teams need to draft the best players in order to keep a healthy cycle of up and down amongst teams. I don't think we should mess with this model.
Competing for draft position is fine, but I am sure the NHL would look forward to the day that Montreal and Toronto are relegated into the AHL. Dumb idea.
I just wonder how much the players actually care about where the team drafts? Especially if it means they're playing themselves out of a job (see Yakupov and the Oilers wingers).
The draft system works fine. Unless you have a GM that thinks Kessel > Seguin + Dougie Hamilton and has the patience of a 2 year old.
If the Oilers want to draft #1 for 10 years and suffer the economic impacts of that, why should anyone else care?
If you have a tournament for the #1 pick and you have a bad team, how will you ever improve?
If you are in Toronto you can just try and sign a big name FA. Lots of markets don't have that luxury. They either don't have the $ or the market that attracts Free Agents (especially when the team is lousy).
And did you know that the AHL teams are owned by the NHL teams? You would relegate the Oilers and promote the Barons? So you would have the Barons in the NHL playing in front of 8000 people and the AHL team playing in Edmonton? Maybe you could relegate futher and the demote teams to the ECHL?
Boy howdy, that would teach them and make the NHL stronger, eh?
Relegation only works where you have an excess of places that can support a franchise. You may have noted that the NHL is having trouble finding homes for the ones they have.
Typical center of the universe thinking.
I don't think Ive seen a post so unanimously shut down by the community. *chuckles*
The current draft system is fine. It was fine in the late 90's / early '00s when the Oilers were drafting 13-22 every year, and it's fine now that they've had the top pick 3 years running.
My solution:
Positioning for a NHL draft ends at season's end.
Playoff is a whole new animal and a 8th seeded team should not be penalized for a playoff push with a lower draft pick.
Keep lottery format: The number of balls you get is based on your season's end standings. (i.e. 30th place gets 30 balls, 15th place gets 15, president's tropy winner gets 1)
President's trophy winner: don't get eliminated 1st round because you still only get 1 ball.
Then, pick one ball at a time for positioning. This way, no one knows where they will end up, it gives the lower seeded teams a decent chance to get high picks and every team wants to continuously compete. Thoughts? Criticism?
Who is this guy writing this blog, what a dumb idea, the funny thing is you put so much thought into all this, I like Guy Demore's idea of the 30th place team getting 30 balls and the 29th team gets 29 balls ...etc
I heard about this before and just re-read it. There is a lot of merit to it. St. Louis with the first last year (yikes) probably wouldn't have happened if this was in effect though.
I love the title of this article, and I like where he's going with less games played (it'll never happen though).
But 30th + 1st OA = improvement, and I don't see the benefit of giving the first pick to the 17th place team .
@RDS
Hmm thats not very good odds if your a bottom team, what if you only include the non playoff teams ?
Sorry but that whole idea is just awful. The teams that finish at the bottom need to draft at the top or they would never have a chance to get better.
All moot anyway as the NHL will never reduce the amount of games.
Wow that was so bad I took the time to sign up. Just terrible for all the reasons people have already said in the comments
With a hard salary cap, guaranteed contracts (like the NHL has), a rookie salary cap, and a 50-contract limit, there is absolutely no need for an entry draft.
The draft could simply be eliminated.
I don't think the draft is broken. I see the argument of "Fail for Nail, Fall for Hall," but it helps to ensure teams can compete and do not toil in the proverbial desert.
Are you a Calgary fan? Calgary would have first overall for the last 3 years instead of Edmonton, since they LOVE the 9th place spot.
You just want "to steal our essence," don't you. (Just a little Dr. Strangelove back at you ;) )
where do new players come from? All free agents out of junior?
that wouldn't work either. Where would you rather live? Dallas, LA, San Jose, New York, Vancouver, Anaheim, Tampa Bay, or...... Calgary ... Edmonton... Toronto .... Phoenix. .....
Teams would have too much of an advantage based on location.
Awful idea and even the premise is flawed.
1) how are teams supposed to get more rest and reduce injuries if they need to finish those games 2 weeks earlier? For this to work the season would have to end in early April as it currently does
2) Now instead of a fight to get into the playoffs, you will have teams on the bubble tanking to miss the playoffs as they have a much better chance to get the first pick in the draft. Would you rather play the Rangers and likely be done in 5 or 6 games or have a chance to get a top pick?
3) teams will much more likely jump from 17th in the league to top 8 in the league with a number 1 pick and 30th place teams get a complete toss up 17th pick. That just creates greater disparity between teams.
To me this is a terrible grasp of a fan of the Leafs that has a GM that wont rebuild but will not make the playoffs and get picks from 8 to 17 forever. I guess Leaf fans will try anything to see their team have a chance to actually win something..........anything..........just one little thing.........they can't even win any respect!!
When you have a 1) an overall hard cap 2) a 50-contract limit 3) guarenteed contracts 4) rookie salary cap.
Players will go where the opportunity is.
Places like Toronto and New York would likely have little cap room because they would have star players on big long contracts, and couldn't compete for emerging young talent, or would have to trade off a star player to compete for an emerging star.
Weaker teams would have cap room and opportunity for players to play immediately.
If you have the 4 things, which I listed, the draft really isn't necessary.
There are only 23 jobs on the Rangers.
I dunno, Godot.
European soccer sucks in terms of competitive balance. The elite teams just pay for and sign the world's best players, and the lesser teams can only sit back and dream.
Sure there are only 23 roster spots on the Rangers, and some of them are still occupied by Brandon Prust and Mike Rupp instead of Steven Stamkos and Taylor Hall.
You want to take the competitive balance out of the NHL - you're going to lose a ton of fans.
I agree with Archeologuy. Imagine being a bottom feeder team for years, and constantly losing this mini-tournament for draft position so you're always drafting in the mid-teens. That's brutal.
I do support a full weighted lottery for those teams that don't make the playoffs (each draft position is determined by the lottery, with all teams having some chance of #1 overall), though. It still gives the worst teams the best chance at picking high (and it would only apply to the first round), but it makes things more interesting for all of the fans whose teams miss the playoffs, rather than just the top 5ish. It also gives a minor boost to the NHL's poor middle class - always stuck in the middle with a difficult road to getting out.
Hall- "Ummmm.... Fumblellini, have you SEEN the Predator Ice Girls???"
The guy who wrote this has too much time on his hands or is a depressed Leaf or Flames fan. One other idea the writer forgot, was that the bottom eight teams have to wear pink frilly uniforms the next season... to attract more fans and to give them insentive to get back into the play offs. Sort of mentioned here, but off topic... how do you feel as a Leaf fan, paying $200 bucks per game , and out of the play offs, and Coyoets pay $20 bucks a game and are in the play offs most years...
Just because a smoked salmon nutella sandwich sounds good to me doesn't mean I should tell others about it. It's a silly idea.
Haha, you guys must have missed the part where I said it was a fantasy. I am fully aware of all of the flaws. I think there are a couple of things worth considering though: the shortened season would reduce injuries and save money. Of course it will never happen, just like the NHL seems to have no interest in dealing with concussions. If the NHL cared about the players, it would look into a shortened season.
As for the playoff draft...yeah, you guys have no imagination. There are plenty of permutations and possibilities that could work. To be honest, I don't have a big problem with the current system. The idea that bad teams would remain bad under a different one is as flawed as anything I wrote. Columbus and the New York Islanders are not being helped by their high picks. How did the Red Wings get competitive? They were bad with Stevie Y for a long time, and who are their top-3 picks? And as for the Leafs, their years as one of tne top four teams in the league in the early 90s and early 2000s were certainly not driven by draft choices, nor by high-priced talent.
The way to get good in the NHL is...well, I won't ruin it for you guys, but it's complicated. The draft is only a small part.
Just messing around here. You guys are far too serious about this stuff. Must be Canucks fans. Things are not so hot over there I'm hearing.
1) reducing the schedule by two weeks would still be less dense.
2) teams don't tank.
3) the draft is not the main determinant of which teams do better. If it were, there would be a much more obvious cycle.
4) not sure what Brian Burke's decisions have to do with me. Where did I write anything about what I thought of that?
What a shock that Edmonton fans love a draft system that rewards failure.