Draft Order / Lottery Improvement

[kxx]

I don't know about limiting a team's ability to draft very high. What if a top prospect turns out to be a dud? Do we now penalize that franchise for its bad luck and leave them to flounder?

No but we do penalize them bad scouting and for not trying to build the team in other meaningful ways.

Every playoff / middling team has to improve / maintain by means other than high draft picks.

 

[Jeti]

Looked at last year stats to come up with the following hypothetical. Based on each teams last years final 20 games and using this years Lottery% as comparison...here is how the odds would have been assigned based on this new proposal:

Last Year% W L OTL Pts Prop %
CBJ 06.00% 16 03 1 33 20.00%
DAL 02.50% 14 06 0 28 13.50%
COL 03.50% 12 07 1 25 11.50%
LAK 02.00% 11 06 3 25 09.50%
BOS 01.00% 10 05 5 25 08.50%
FLA 03.00% 11 07 2 24 07.50%
PHA 06.50% 07 06 7 21 06.50%
SJS 05.00% 10 09 1 21 06.00%
NJD 07.50% 07 09 4 18 05.00%
CAR 08.50% 06 10 4 16 03.50%
EDM 11.50% 06 10 4 16 03.00%
TOR 09.50% 05 12 3 13 02.50%
BUF 20.00% 04 13 3 11 02.00%
ARI 13.50% 04 15 1 09 01.00%

"Tanking" teams are punished!

You really think Dallas, LA, Boston, Florida, Philadelphia and San Jose deserved better odds than Carolina, Edmonton, Toronto, Buffalo and Arizona?

Your system has clearly gone too far the other way. Sure, you want to reduce the incentive to tank, but the draft order has always been the way it is solely to help bad teams get good again and you've removed that balancing factor in the league entirely. Even worse, you've swung it the wrong way. It's hard enough to attract free agents to a losing team. You can't punish teams for being bad by taking away their best chance at becoming good again. It's not even about the first overall, you're screwing them out of top-5, maybe top-10 picks.

The spectrum of draft ranking systems should range from reverse standings (most parity but also tank friendly) to equal chances to all non-playoff teams (least parity and tank friendly). You've gone past that end of the spectrum to something that, no offense, is complete and utter nonsense that'd break the league very quickly. The last revision to the draft system moved it further to the right on that spectrum, and maybe it could be moved further, but I think they should give this system time to see how it balances out the playing field.

 

[JC Numminen]

Going to leave this here:

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=2062235