GDT: Draft lottery thread

[lilidk]

I am not upset about #4 pick . It is going to be very good player. I am upset that for 25 years Red Wings were in playoffs without chance to get #1 or even #10. Batman sucks

 

[ArGarBarGar]

At this point I want MTL to get #1. How cool would that be for Laf (or any kid) to get drafted by their childhood favorite team? Would be special for sure, and we'd still have Zadina to fill their net with pucks

I don't want Montreal to get any player that will limit the number of pucks Zadina will fill their nets with.

 

[pz29]

I agree there should be no lottery but it's what we're working with. Most are only upset about the lottery because we just got burned. If we had won or not a lottery team there would be almost no discussion here about it. The worst team has won the lottery less than 25%. Odds and history were against a winner.

I have actually always been against the very concept of this lottery thing. Also, "this is what we have to work with" and "can you propose another system" are two very different arguments. It's like when a credit card company screws you over, you call them, and all they can say is "sorry, this is our policy." They have created a bad policy and are now just blindly following it.

 

[Mlotek]

At this point I want MTL to get #1. How cool would that be for Laf (or any kid) to get drafted by their childhood favorite team? Would be special for sure, and we'd still have Zadina to fill their net with pucks

Are you telling me Eichel, Larkin, and Ekblad didn't dream of being drafted by Vityaz growing up?

 

[Oddbob]

I'm as pissed as anyone over dropping to 4th. That said there is no rigged garbage happening, because if there was, please explain how NJD got not 1 but 2 of the last 3 first overalls?

 

[RealityHurts]

I don't think it is rigged, I just think it is broken, especially if the league wants to pontificate about parity.

I know parts of our fan-base were upset about #1, that is fine. What I cannot stand is the fall from the top 3 entirely that happens in this system. One of the other worst things is oh the Avs lucked into Makar when they got shafted. Okay, that doesn't mean it wasn't stupid and maybe they take him at 2 or 3 and people are even more into Sakic for doing it. I just don't think you should fall from #1 all the way to #4 after you play .275 hockey for 5 months and change.

Don't you get it? That's EXACTLY why the current system is in place. It's blatantly obvious Detroit tanked. It's not even funny, they legit sported what I believe to be the worst record in the salary cap era of any team in the NHL. You're legit saying that tanking should be rewarded. Hint: it should not. Remember, the parity in the league is decreasing with every year: the gap between teams has become very small. In modern NHL, how can a team do so poorly if it wasn't manipulated to do so?

Your GM probably could have done so many things to make the team better, but he didn't. It must've been embarassing for multiple teams to tank in the hopes of getting McDavid back then too. Yet, Detroit managed to do even worst than those teams that were criticized for tanking at the time??

I see you guys have many players in LTIR. You gotta ask yourself whether they're truly still injured or simply asked to retire/not played. or, maybe it was orchestrated by a GM in the first place: why would you even sign players til they're that old..

Either way, bad management and/or tanking should not be rewarded. It ruins the integrity of the sport. I'm not saying Pittsburgh or Toronto deserve Lafreniere this year (as I believe the system was indeed poorly thought for this year). However, while this year's system was full of flaws and consequently deficient, your odds stayed the same, as they should have. I can understand people being disappointed, but it irks me so much to read posts I deem entitled. You are NOT (and should NOT be) entitled to the first pick for finishing last. Being guaranteed 4th is already very good.

 

[Winger98]

Why not just admit you have no real clue why Detroit was so bad this year, especially when you start to get close to it you veer off into conspiracy land.

 

[MBH]

Don't you get it? That's EXACTLY why the current system is in place. It's blatantly obvious Detroit tanked. It's not even funny, they legit sported what I believe to be the worst record in the salary cap era of any team in the NHL. You're legit saying that tanking should be rewarded. Hint: it should not. Remember, the parity in the league is decreasing with every year: the gap between teams has become very small. In modern NHL, how can a team do so poorly if it wasn't manipulated to do so?

Your GM probably could have done so many things to make the team better, but he didn't. It must've been embarassing for multiple teams to tank in the hopes of getting McDavid back then too. Yet, Detroit managed to do even worst than those teams that were criticized for tanking at the time??

I see you guys have many players in LTIR. You gotta ask yourself whether they're truly still injured or simply asked to retire/not played. or, maybe it was orchestrated by a GM in the first place: why would you even sign players til they're that old..

Either way, bad management and/or tanking should not be rewarded. It ruins the integrity of the sport. I'm not saying Pittsburgh or Toronto deserve Lafreniere this year (as I believe the system was indeed poorly thought for this year). However, while this year's system was full of flaws and consequently deficient, your odds stayed the same, as they should have. I can understand people being disappointed, but it irks me so much to read posts I deem entitled. You are NOT (and should NOT be) entitled to the first pick for finishing last. Being guaranteed 4th is already very good.

Entitled?
Dude - drafts have been in opposite order of the standings forever.
For a reason.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

Don't you get it? That's EXACTLY why the current system is in place. It's blatantly obvious Detroit tanked. It's not even funny, they legit sported what I believe to be the worst record in the salary cap era of any team in the NHL. You're legit saying that tanking should be rewarded. Hint: it should not. Remember, the parity in the league is decreasing with every year: the gap between teams has become very small. In modern NHL, how can a team do so poorly if it wasn't manipulated to do so?

Your GM probably could have done so many things to make the team better, but he didn't. It must've been embarassing for multiple teams to tank in the hopes of getting McDavid back then too. Yet, Detroit managed to do even worst than those teams that were criticized for tanking at the time??

I see you guys have many players in LTIR. You gotta ask yourself whether they're truly still injured or simply asked to retire/not played. or, maybe it was orchestrated by a GM in the first place: why would you even sign players til they're that old..

Either way, bad management and/or tanking should not be rewarded. It ruins the integrity of the sport. I'm not saying Pittsburgh or Toronto deserve Lafreniere this year (as I believe the system was indeed poorly thought for this year). However, while this year's system was full of flaws and consequently deficient, your odds stayed the same, as they should have. I can understand people being disappointed, but it irks me so much to read posts I deem entitled. You are NOT (and should NOT be) entitled to the first pick for finishing last. Being guaranteed 4th is already very good.

You clearly know very little about this team and how they got where they were. Not really surprising, I don't expect others to. I also don't have Lafreniere at #1 on my board and could care less about there being a smaller lottery system with slot movement spots like we used to have. I mean really the need for one isn't necessary if you want to inject teams with talent deficiencies with talent which is the stated purpose of a draft and you want to have a cap that creates parity. That is what the league at least publicly states they are going for. This system doesn't help that. It doesn't matter, how Detroit got there was a natural progression. Now what is about to happen is really your more classic version of tanking.

Because the Wings are not getting a known elite talent from falling out of the top 3 where yes historically they have the data on what that means impact wise and it is a massive fall. Detroit shouldn't do anything until they have an elite player. You cannot win in the league without them, so you stay there and hope luck smiles on you. What happens to the league, well an O6 franchise that is the 8th most valuable and sat 7th in paid league attendance despite being the worst team in 30 years is about to go in the crapper for a little bit here. They shouldn't sign anyone except taking care of some RFAs and try to be floor team and hope for better luck in the next couple of lotteries. They have no reason to enter free agency, help cap strapped teams and no tangible assets to improve. That isn't helping what the league is looking for, but alas that is what is about to happen. Detroit got to the bottom this bad by trying to extend a 25 year playoffs streak at the behest of their dying owner. Their elite talent retired. They didn't look at a McDavid, Lemieux or Lindros and fire the torpedoes as hard as they could at themselves.

Tanking isn't a one size fits all argument. They were a bottom five team entering the year, that lost their only D-man that could take heavy minutes in the first month of the season for the year and had their veteran goalie who was never spectacular but just turned in the worst season by a goalie with 20 starts since 1990. Had a disappearing act by a young RFA coming off a 30 goal season that they had to deal at the deadline. You can act like that was planned because you likely only saw them roll through your town, but as somebody that had to sit through every single one of their games and knows a great deal about this team and how they wound up there, your assessment is completely out to lunch.

This lottery system doesn't give the right odds at improvement. That you would have a better chance at sliding out of the top 3 than drafting in it is silly. You know who told you as much. The league themselves in May and were talked out of it by the GMs for trying to change in year. Fine, but they should fix this in the next off-season. This isn't working, it was a massive over-correct to the Oilers, Sabres and Coyotes year. The 11th and 12th place finishers shouldn't be picking more often in the top 3 than the 2nd and 3rd place finishers which has happened. The Devils got two #1s so it didn't stop Edmonton esk happenings. Just kill this thing with fire, come up with something much different, something that actually injects talent into the teams most obviously lacking it the most. By the way this is cyclical, all of our teams will be there at some point, careful you should know you're building a glass house.

 

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

Don't you get it? That's EXACTLY why the current system is in place. It's blatantly obvious Detroit tanked. It's not even funny, they legit sported what I believe to be the worst record in the salary cap era of any team in the NHL. You're legit saying that tanking should be rewarded. Hint: it should not. Remember, the parity in the league is decreasing with every year: the gap between teams has become very small. In modern NHL, how can a team do so poorly if it wasn't manipulated to do so?

Your GM probably could have done so many things to make the team better, but he didn't. It must've been embarassing for multiple teams to tank in the hopes of getting McDavid back then too. Yet, Detroit managed to do even worst than those teams that were criticized for tanking at the time??

I see you guys have many players in LTIR. You gotta ask yourself whether they're truly still injured or simply asked to retire/not played. or, maybe it was orchestrated by a GM in the first place: why would you even sign players til they're that old..

Either way, bad management and/or tanking should not be rewarded. It ruins the integrity of the sport. I'm not saying Pittsburgh or Toronto deserve Lafreniere this year (as I believe the system was indeed poorly thought for this year). However, while this year's system was full of flaws and consequently deficient, your odds stayed the same, as they should have. I can understand people being disappointed, but it irks me so much to read posts I deem entitled. You are NOT (and should NOT be) entitled to the first pick for finishing last. Being guaranteed 4th is already very good.

You gotta ask yourself why if you're going to look and see the players on LTIR you won't actually look at why they're there.

Danny DeKeyser - Injured early in year, had surgery that was going to keep him out all year
Henrik Zetterberg - Back has been f***ed since 2014, but sure, go nuts with your conspiracy on him
Johan Franzen - Been out of the league since 2014 with concussion symptoms. Dude is major league messed up. He came back and played when it was actually to his detriment.
Anthony Mantha - Got dumped by Jake Muzzin. He's not going to willingly sit out a season when he's coming up for his last go around in RFA.

No, we're saying that a team that is organically bad from years of overpaying mediocre players who all fell apart at the same time, the top end players leaving in a short window, and coming off an around ten year streak of only modest draft results should not be tarred with the same brush as the team who traded away two starting goalies in the same year. The Wings this year had about five guys who are truly good NHL players.

Larkin
Bertuzzi
Mantha
Fabbri
Hronek

They had AA who was decent before they traded him.

The rest of the roster was either mediocre, replaceable pieces or are support players who would look infinitely better if the top players were better. Like Luke Glendening. Luke Glendening would be a badass 4C on a good roster. Valterri Filppula would have been an okay floater piece in a 3C role that was signed this past year... but with injuries and sheer lack of talent, he was being run as a 2C a bunch.

If you weren't as anti-Wings as you're coming in here to be... you'd see that Detroit was actually respecting the "integrity" of the sport for about 5 years that they shouldn't have been. They should have been this bad in the McDavid year. But they kept making deals to push for the playoffs and try to get in to make some noise that way. If they wanted to tank, they wouldn't have been spending to the cap limit every year. 2016 prior to signing Nielsen and Helm and all that? They were pushing to try to sign Stamkos.

It pisses me off that everyone gets this high and mighty bullcrap about "you shouldn't reward bad management". Detroit and the way they manage? It's the framework that Dallas uses, it's the framework that San Jose uses, it's the framework that Edmonton uses now... so on and so forth. Hell, Tampa Bay was a brilliantly run organization for the past like ten years, right? Well, the guy who ran them at that level is in Detroit now. It's not "rewarding bad management" it's allowing the cycle to happen. Teams get good through draft assets and shrewd management, guys get expensive or old and then teams get bad. So on and so forth.

 

[RealityHurts]

Entitled?
Dude - drafts have been in opposite order of the standings forever.
For a reason.

Yeah. First is also not guaranteed to last place team in standings.

For a reason.

Detroit has a reasonable shot at is but isn't entitled to it. Simple.

 

[RealityHurts]

You gotta ask yourself why if you're going to look and see the players on LTIR you won't actually look at why they're there.

Danny DeKeyser - Injured early in year, had surgery that was going to keep him out all year
Henrik Zetterberg - Back has been f***ed since 2014, but sure, go nuts with your conspiracy on him
Johan Franzen - Been out of the league since 2014 with concussion symptoms. Dude is major league messed up. He came back and played when it was actually to his detriment.
Anthony Mantha - Got dumped by Jake Muzzin. He's not going to willingly sit out a season when he's coming up for his last go around in RFA.

No, we're saying that a team that is organically bad from years of overpaying mediocre players who all fell apart at the same time, the top end players leaving in a short window, and coming off an around ten year streak of only modest draft results should not be tarred with the same brush as the team who traded away two starting goalies in the same year. The Wings this year had about five guys who are truly good NHL players.

Larkin
Bertuzzi
Mantha
Fabbri
Hronek

They had AA who was decent before they traded him.

The rest of the roster was either mediocre, replaceable pieces or are support players who would look infinitely better if the top players were better. Like Luke Glendening. Luke Glendening would be a badass 4C on a good roster. Valterri Filppula would have been an okay floater piece in a 3C role that was signed this past year... but with injuries and sheer lack of talent, he was being run as a 2C a bunch.

If you weren't as anti-Wings as you're coming in here to be... you'd see that Detroit was actually respecting the "integrity" of the sport for about 5 years that they shouldn't have been. They should have been this bad in the McDavid year. But they kept making deals to push for the playoffs and try to get in to make some noise that way. If they wanted to tank, they wouldn't have been spending to the cap limit every year. 2016 prior to signing Nielsen and Helm and all that? They were pushing to try to sign Stamkos.

It pisses me off that everyone gets this high and mighty bullcrap about "you shouldn't reward bad management". Detroit and the way they manage? It's the framework that Dallas uses, it's the framework that San Jose uses, it's the framework that Edmonton uses now... so on and so forth. Hell, Tampa Bay was a brilliantly run organization for the past like ten years, right? Well, the guy who ran them at that level is in Detroit now. It's not "rewarding bad management" it's allowing the cycle to happen. Teams get good through draft assets and shrewd management, guys get expensive or old and then teams get bad. So on and so forth.

You have to look at the standings over the last decade or so. Teams practically never finish as low as Detroit has. It's blatant tanking. Don't get me wrong, while tanking ruins the integrity, I do believe it is a valid strategy to rebuilding an organization. However, only to a certain extent, it has to be limited. Hence why there is a lottery. I have no problems with Detroit tanking, but fans have to be conscious that it isn't a guaranteed first, which is about right otherwise it'd be a tank fest.

Of the teams you mentionned for management, notice where San Jose and Edmonton are now. I'm not sure you could realistically call that a good management framework. Tampa should never be considered in these discussions, they have an unfair advantage agaist most teams due to low taxes. This justifies how they seemingly get players signed to 'team friendly' contracts and are able to lure FA's. It's a blatant stupidity the league needs to fix. We also have to question the management looking into the LTIR player contracts. Look at how old they are and how many years they have left..

Teams always get injuries every year, it doesn't excuse the performance that was delivered. 39 points in a season after 71 games? Are you saying no team has ever been as injured as Detroit historically? It's blatant tanking and it's fine. I however don't think that justifies crying about the 4th spot through lottery

 

[Mlotek]

Entitled?
Dude - drafts have been in opposite order of the standings forever.
For a reason.

Yes and the league made a change many years ago that said the top 3 picks are subject to a lottery.

For non playoffs, outside the top 3 picks its still in reverse of standings.


Meaning:
31st grants you:
(i) 4th overall pick
(ii) Best odds to win the lottery

30th grants you:
(i) 5th overall pick
(ii) 2nd best odds to win the lottery

29th grants you:
(i) 6th overall pick
(ii) 3rd best odds to win the lottery

etc for non-playoff teams

 

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

You have to look at the standings over the last decade or so. Teams practically never finish as low as Detroit has. It's blatant tanking. Don't get me wrong, while tanking ruins the integrity, I do believe it is a valid strategy to rebuilding an organization. However, only to a certain extent, it has to be limited. Hence why there is a lottery. I have no problems with Detroit tanking, but fans have to be conscious that it isn't a guaranteed first, which is about right otherwise it'd be a tank fest.

Of the teams you mentionned for management, notice where San Jose and Edmonton are now. I'm not sure you could realistically call that a good management framework. Tampa should never be considered in these discussions, they have an unfair advantage agaist most teams due to low taxes. This justifies how they seemingly get players signed to 'team friendly' contracts and are able to lure FA's. It's a blatant stupidity the league needs to fix. We also have to question the management looking into the LTIR player contracts. Look at how old they are and how many years they have left..

Teams always get injuries every year, it doesn't excuse the performance that was delivered. 39 points in a season after 71 games? Are you saying no team has ever been as injured as Detroit historically? It's blatant tanking and it's fine. I however don't think that justifies crying about the 4th spot through lottery

Teams practically never finish that low?

All kinds of teams have finished at around 22-24 wins in the past fifteen years. Many of them were at around 19-20 by game 71. So is your barometer for "most teams aren't that bad" the fact that a bunch of those teams played to OT and got loser points and Detroit just didn't in 19-20? And also, it's possible to just suck without tanking. Detroit sucks because they haven't either A) had a good shot to add an elite talent in 30 years or B) had the cache to get an elite player to sign here for about a decade. Look at 18-19. They ripped off 7 of 10 at the end of the year with an abysmal roster. Let's say Detroit goes 4-7 in their last 11 games, which I think would actually be pretty reasonable because you'd start having the good teams on their roster sitting guys for the playoffs, they're 21-56-5 That's basically what Colorado did twice. Most of the teams at that level kind of get a dead cat bounce the last ten games. Several of them have on the order of 12 loser points instead of 5 also. The Wings were bad, yes. But cutting the season off at 71 games for them makes it look even worse. They could easily add 9 points in 11 games at the end of the year when teams in the playoffs are taking the foot off the accelerator and young guys on really bad teams are pushing super hard and all of a sudden, they're not uniquely bad.

Tanking isn't avoiding signing a big guy in free agency. Tanking is trading Michal Neuvirth and Jonas Enroth at the same deadline who are actually playing pretty dang good. It's trading for Torrey Mitchell by getting rid of a couple useful guys including Matt Moulson and then dealing him when he played a little bit too well.

What Detroit did this year was deal a bunch of middling assets (4th, Vili Saarijarvi, Alec Regula, Jacob De La Rose) for guys who had maybe a chance of not being middling assets, but likely were going to be (Erne, Eric Comrie, Brendan Perlini) and one guy who actually hit in a good way (Robby Fabbri). They had a bad roster last year and they just didn't spend copious amounts of money to try to fix it and then had injuries to some key pieces.

But whatever, a team sucks so it means they're tanking, apparently.

 

[RealityHurts]

Teams practically never finish that low?

All kinds of teams have finished at around 22-24 wins in the past fifteen years. Many of them were at around 19-20 by game 71. So is your barometer for "most teams aren't that bad" the fact that a bunch of those teams played to OT and got loser points and Detroit just didn't in 19-20? And also, it's possible to just suck without tanking. Detroit sucks because they haven't either A) had a good shot to add an elite talent in 30 years or B) had the cache to get an elite player to sign here for about a decade. Look at 18-19. They ripped off 7 of 10 at the end of the year with an abysmal roster. Let's say Detroit goes 4-7 in their last 11 games, which I think would actually be pretty reasonable because you'd start having the good teams on their roster sitting guys for the playoffs, they're 21-56-5 That's basically what Colorado did twice. Most of the teams at that level kind of get a dead cat bounce the last ten games. Several of them have on the order of 12 loser points instead of 5 also. The Wings were bad, yes. But cutting the season off at 71 games for them makes it look even worse. They could easily add 9 points in 11 games at the end of the year when teams in the playoffs are taking the foot off the accelerator and young guys on really bad teams are pushing super hard and all of a sudden, they're not uniquely bad.

Tanking isn't avoiding signing a big guy in free agency. Tanking is trading Michal Neuvirth and Jonas Enroth at the same deadline who are actually playing pretty dang good. It's trading for Torrey Mitchell by getting rid of a couple useful guys including Matt Moulson and then dealing him when he played a little bit too well.

What Detroit did this year was deal a bunch of middling assets (4th, Vili Saarijarvi, Alec Regula, Jacob De La Rose) for guys who had maybe a chance of not being middling assets, but likely were going to be (Erne, Eric Comrie, Brendan Perlini) and one guy who actually hit in a good way (Robby Fabbri). They had a bad roster last year and they just didn't spend copious amounts of money to try to fix it and then had injuries to some key pieces.

But whatever, a team sucks so it means they're tanking, apparently.

I think points portray the team's performance much better than just wins. I believe you aren't looking at the complete picture. That being said, looking at points, it's easy to spot that they're tanking.

NHL Archive - Final Standings, Year-by-Year

If you look at 2000--->2013, never has the bottom team been anywhere near Detroit in terms of low pointage, with the exception of the lockout year where the last place team was 36 points in 48 games.

From 2013 onwards, I only checked 2 years, and both times the lowest scoring team was in the 60s. Detroit was on pace for 45. This is an abysmal 20 year-low by a significant margin. They're either fielding the worst team in modern NHL history, or are tanking. The latter seems more likely.

I don't think the argument of ''if they were tanking then they would have-'' stands here, because it was already clear they were finishing this season last WELL before the trade deadline.

Inaction can be considered tanking in some cases. The organization, even if it intends to rebuild, should at least have the modesty to make appropriate moves in the off-season to field an NHL team and not an AHL caliber team for the sake of its fans. Results are everything, and the results are indicative of a tank. If professionals outline McDavid's draft year as a tankathon and teams scored much more, how can you claim Detroit isn't even tanking then?

Wins isn't an indicator here. You may be able to compare their amount of wins to another team, but how come none of those teams over the last 2 decades scored that low in points?

By the way, even if they miraculously weren't tanking, they aren't entitled to the 1st pick which is my whole point.

 

[ArmChairGM89]

I think points portray the team's performance much better than just wins. I believe you aren't looking at the complete picture. That being said, looking at points, it's easy to spot that they're tanking.

NHL Archive - Final Standings, Year-by-Year

If you look at 2000--->2013, never has the bottom team been anywhere near Detroit in terms of low pointage, with the exception of the lockout year where the last place team was 36 points in 48 games.

From 2013 onwards, I only checked 2 years, and both times the lowest scoring team was in the 60s. Detroit was on pace for 45. This is an abysmal 20 year-low by a significant margin. They're either fielding the worst team in modern NHL history, or are tanking. The latter seems more likely.

I don't think the argument of ''if they were tanking then they would have-'' stands here, because it was already clear they were finishing this season last WELL before the trade deadline.

Inaction can be considered tanking in some cases. The organization, even if it intends to rebuild, should at least have the modesty to make appropriate moves in the off-season to field an NHL team and not an AHL caliber team for the sake of its fans. Results are everything, and the results are indicative of a tank. If professionals outline McDavid's draft year as a tankathon and teams scored much more, how can you claim Detroit isn't even tanking then?

Wins isn't an indicator here. You may be able to compare their amount of wins to another team, but how come none of those teams over the last 2 decades scored that low in points?

By the way, even if they miraculously weren't tanking, they aren't entitled to the 1st pick which is my whole point.

Imo tanking is actively trying to lose. Trading away valuable players etc. standing pat is not trying to improve but it’s not actively trying to get worse. In the off-season we signed a quality depth defensmen and what should have been a serviceable veteran center. Those were attempts to keep us from a total trash season. They didn’t work but that’s not tanking. Getting rid of those types of players with no replacement would be.

 

[The Real Pastafarian]

I see you guys have many players in LTIR. You gotta ask yourself whether they're truly still injured or simply asked to retire/not played

Johann Franzen just emailed me to say: "Tell that RealityHurts pud to go f*ck himself."

 

[jkutswings]

I suppose Colorado finishing with 48 points in 2017 doesn't count. Not at all similar to the Wings' season (45 point pace, had it gone 82 games). Nope, the Wings stand alone as definitely tanking since they finished with under 60 points. (Which, incidentally, amounts to a difference of only 7-8 wins over an entire 82-game season.)

Instead, I'll take my sample size of one and conclude that Detroit will draft a fantastic defenseman at 4, then have multiple forwards contend for the scoring title. Because they're just like Colorado.

See how fun it is to extrapolate from insufficient data?

 

[Mlotek]

Imo tanking is actively trying to lose. Trading away valuable players etc. standing pat is not trying to improve but it’s not actively trying to get worse. In the off-season we signed a quality depth defensmen and what should have been a serviceable veteran center. Those were attempts to keep us from a total trash season. They didn’t work but that’s not tanking. Getting rid of those types of players with no replacement would be.

Keeping Blash around is enough.

How many coaches survived multiple 10+ losing streaks during a single season and not get fired. Let alone be brought back for another year.

Or when Givani Smith outworking more than half the team still gets sent back down to minors. Kid is actually hustling getting the puck and starts the rare cycle which even the top line can't do.

 

[ricky0034]

Keeping Blash around is enough.

How many coaches survived multiple 10+ losing streaks during a single season and not get fired. Let alone be brought back for another year.

Or when Givani Smith outworking more than half the team still gets sent back down to minors. Kid is actually hustling getting the puck and starts the rare cycle which even the top line can't do.

its "tanking" to only give a rookie putting up 0.14 PPG a quarter of the season in the NHL?

....okay then

 

[RealityHurts]

I suppose Colorado finishing with 48 points in 2017 doesn't count. Not at all similar to the Wings' season (45 point pace, had it gone 82 games). Nope, the Wings stand alone as definitely tanking since they finished with under 60 points. (Which, incidentally, amounts to a difference of only 7-8 wins over an entire 82-game season.)

Instead, I'll take my sample size of one and conclude that Detroit will draft a fantastic defenseman at 4, then have multiple forwards contend for the scoring title. Because they're just like Colorado.

See how fun it is to extrapolate from insufficient data?

Then, Colorado was tanking. I'm not saying other teams haven't ever tanked. Where do you see a sample size of 1? I took a sample size of 15 years at the very least. Granted, I didn't look at 2017, so my bad there. However, they weren't entitled to 1st that year either. In fact, they got 4th like Detroit, so yeah. I know it must suck for the fans, but I just can't stand reading people saying the org deserved a 1st OA. They didn't.

You're extrapolating outside of the conversation topic. I never talked about whether the player would be good in the NHL or not.

 

[Winger98]

Imo tanking is actively trying to lose. Trading away valuable players etc. standing pat is not trying to improve but it’s not actively trying to get worse. In the off-season we signed a quality depth defensmen and what should have been a serviceable veteran center. Those were attempts to keep us from a total trash season. They didn’t work but that’s not tanking. Getting rid of those types of players with no replacement would be.

Most of this season's horror show can be traced directly to Howard and his awful season. If he puts up just an average year with a sv% a little north of .900 and isn't a sieve, he prolly puts up five or six more wins by himself. His falling apart just killed us. If you just plug in a straight .900 sv% he gives up 14 fewer goals, knocking his gaa from 4.2 to 3.58. He has a career average year, and he knocks 23 goals off his total and his gaa plummets to 3.19.

Losing Dekeyser hurt, AA being AWOL hurt, etc. But Howard killed us.

 

[ManwithNoIdentity]

At this point I want MTL to get #1. How cool would that be for Laf (or any kid) to get drafted by their childhood favorite team? Would be special for sure, and we'd still have Zadina to fill their net with pucks

I’ll always be pissed about the results of this clown show draft but the Habs getting 1OA over teams like the Hawks and Pens is a hurt less situation

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

Then, Colorado was tanking. I'm not saying other teams haven't ever tanked. Where do you see a sample size of 1? I took a sample size of 15 years at the very least. Granted, I didn't look at 2017, so my bad there. However, they weren't entitled to 1st that year either. In fact, they got 4th like Detroit, so yeah. I know it must suck for the fans, but I just can't stand reading people saying the org deserved a 1st OA. They didn't.

You're extrapolating outside of the conversation topic. I never talked about whether the player would be good in the NHL or not.

Again most of our fan-base isn't arguing they are owed one, they are arguing there is no way the odds should actually favor us drafting fourth or any other team for that matter. Many made that argument before that shoe was on our foot as well before you go there. This lottery system has had people having disagreements with it as soon as they rolled it out.

Though certainly when I don't get to watch my team for 9 or 10 months, playoffs teams and the league can call that whatever they like. But playoff teams shouldn't be getting these picks at all. I was very happy during Yzerman's availability he called them playoff teams, it was a shot at the league.

 

[Oddbob]

Don't you get it? That's EXACTLY why the current system is in place. It's blatantly obvious Detroit tanked. It's not even funny, they legit sported what I believe to be the worst record in the salary cap era of any team in the NHL. You're legit saying that tanking should be rewarded. Hint: it should not. Remember, the parity in the league is decreasing with every year: the gap between teams has become very small. In modern NHL, how can a team do so poorly if it wasn't manipulated to do so?

Your GM probably could have done so many things to make the team better, but he didn't. It must've been embarassing for multiple teams to tank in the hopes of getting McDavid back then too. Yet, Detroit managed to do even worst than those teams that were criticized for tanking at the time??

I see you guys have many players in LTIR. You gotta ask yourself whether they're truly still injured or simply asked to retire/not played. or, maybe it was orchestrated by a GM in the first place: why would you even sign players til they're that old..

Either way, bad management and/or tanking should not be rewarded. It ruins the integrity of the sport. I'm not saying Pittsburgh or Toronto deserve Lafreniere this year (as I believe the system was indeed poorly thought for this year). However, while this year's system was full of flaws and consequently deficient, your odds stayed the same, as they should have. I can understand people being disappointed, but it irks me so much to read posts I deem entitled. You are NOT (and should NOT be) entitled to the first pick for finishing last. Being guaranteed 4th is already very good.

How did we tank on purpose? What star or high end players on our roster did we get rid of? We literally had 2 40-45 pt forwards in Nyquist and Tatar in recent times as two of our best, along with a hurting Zetterberg. Who else did we have? We were simply bad, with little in the way of assets to trade for more talent! That doesn't even take into account that our already crappy roster with little NHL depth had among the most man games lost to injury in the league and got half of games goaltended by a goalie who had lost his way! I am also not even suggesting that Yzerman didn't want a good draft pick, but he also didn't go out of his way to make us record bad, as he had next to nothing to work with when he came in.

Also, not supposed to go on other teams forums and provoke them!