Marc Bergevin - Take It Or Leave It Edition

[Milhouse40]

How exactly did he opt out? It's not like he went out and acquired a bunch of vets to help the team. He picked up cap dumps to get extra picks and traded a young guy not living up to his potential for a younger guy not living up to his potential. He didn't go out and try to build a competitive team this offseason.

To be fair....How exactly did he opt in?
He got picks for taking on Mason's contract but between that 4th and that 7th round pick...he got Armia which to me as the 2011 16th overall pick was the real prize he was looking for not those bottom round picks. Could have better picks if he let Armia in Winnipeg. But Armia makes this team a better team for this season.

Kotkaniemi is a good example to me also. If the plan wasn't to compete why take him for the ride?
He's making the team more competitive and it would have been easy to just send him down for another year and just play a scrubs on the 3rd line instead and making the team bad....like Vancouver did with Pettersson with last year.

So there's was a lot of moves made to keep this team competitive...or if you prefer, he wasn't really commited to have another rebuilding year.

 

[Andrei79]

Yup all we got to do is avoid the other 90% of top 5 picks that don't win cups and we are golden. Let us know which exact draft its going to be when we will get the elite player that will turn this team around. We gotta hope we land on one of those 10 players and not the 34 others.

So far we are 8 years from a top 1/2 pick winning a cup, and looking at that list the time line isn't going to shrink only get longer.

Good, then let's bank on landing the players we need in draft positions where the odds are overwhelmingly worse.

 

[JohnLennon]

A Scrubadam classic. Portray a stat in the wrong framework to create a false narrative.

Only 10 of the last 44 something 1st and 2nd round picks have won cups!!!!

Yet doesn't understand that there just isn't enough cups to go around for all those 44 players.

And this can be seen by what you posted.... the vast majority of cups were won with 1st and 2md picks

Scrubadam's point isn't totally for nothing, to be fair. Andrei79 conveniently missed that 8 of the last 10 Cups were won by the same three teams. You're right, there aren't enough Cups to go around for all top 2 picks to win one, but when the same few teams win it consistently, you have to start thinking that the bigger reason for those Cup wins was not the fact that they had a top 2 pick on their team, but rather that the teams themselves were very well constructed. Hockey is more of a team sport than say, basketball, where championships can be won on the back of one or two players. There's a reason some of hockey's greatest have never won a Cup.

So of course, Crosby, Doughty and Kane were massive factors in their teams' Cup wins - but the construction of the team around them was really the key.

I think both scrubadam and Andrei79 cherrypicked the same stat to suit their own narratives, when really the answer was somewhere in between.

 

[JohnLennon]

Good, then let's bank on landing the players we need in draft positions where the odds are overwhelmingly worse.

While Edmonton is an outlier to be sure, there is still a valuable lesson to be learnt from them. Yes, management of that team has been horrendous for as long as we can remember. And yes, their top 10 picks have been hit and miss for the better part of a decade.

But a massive reason that team has struggled to fill out a competent roster was not as much the total bust of Yakupov and potential bust of Puljujarvi, but rather the lack of quality picks in the later rounds of the draft. People tease Buffalo and Edmonton for being stuck in mediocrity for as long as we can remember, but both teams have had that in common: horrible drafting in rounds 2-7.

As I mentioned in a prior post, hitting on your top 5 picks is invaluable, but filling out your team using the deeper rounds of the draft is almost as important, and something both teams have lacked for a long time.

So yes, your point is well-taken, picking high and picking right is very key for success, but something you may be missing is also how important it is to hit in the later rounds. The fact Bergevin "claims" to aim to continue building for the future, whether that is by trading vets this year or whatnot, despite the surprising success story the Habs have been thus far this year, is a sign of a shift in mentality- and a welcome one at that. If he follows through on that, I will be pleased. I do not necessarily want to see this team tank this year for a top pick as you seem to imply, but I do want that focus on the future to be reinforced. We have a handful of top picks again this upcoming draft- hold them and perhaps acquire more, but don't go all-out firesale and mess with the current team too much. There's clearly a good foundation here.

 

[Andrei79]

McDonagh wasn't the best prospect.

On whatever forum you went, people kept repeating that, when it was solely used as an exgeration by the usual suspects who like to use hyperbole in lieu of arguments. You had a whole bunch of people correcting them, myself included, as McD had a very average season before getting traded and Subban had just dominated the WJC and was rightfully seen, by the most astute as the Habs best prospect.

And this changes what in terms of how bad the deal was, exactly ? You understand that the "most astute" would also point out that McDonagh was not average but actually had a very translatable game, one which ended up translating into a first pair defenseman. See how debatable the Brook/Poehling/Romanov rankings are ? I could point to you posters who "rightfully" see each one as the best prospect and two groups of them will be wrong. Yet, trading one of them for Eric Staal would still be brutal without needing hindsight.

And what's the irony of the psychiatry comment?

The irony of someone seemingly blaming Gomez' game on depression when 1. his game was already showing signs of decline before the trade 2. trying to put all of his game on depression when his game declining could very well be a precipitating factor for it in itself. 3. Assuming a poster could not, in fact, be working in that very field of psychiatry, doing things like, well, diagnosing depressions.

That Gomez got diagnosed right when he went downhill, which wasn't with the Rangers, and no matter your trite use of the fanbase argument, Gomez wasn't that much overpaid if you considered his playoff stats, rather than focusing solely on what can inhence your narrative, which are his season stats. When he got traded, he dominated the league (top 5) in playoff points over the 7 seasons before the trade, with 49 points in 50 games, but I guess playoff points shouldn't be mentioned when we speak of Gomez, only his season points, cuz y'know, confimation bias and yaddi yaddi yadda, and yet, I'm sure, like myself, you could easily recognized the inherent value of having, say, a guy like Pacioretty scoring at ,50 gpg clip in the playoffs instead of the season? No? Maybe? Can you see some of your, and other posters's bias here? Am i just crazy?

And yet the Rangers had no qualms getting rid of his playoff production in favor of a prospect with a "very average season" and a coked up winger. Rangers fans had no qualms about celebrating the fact they got rid of a cap hit that cost them almost 14% of their cap at one point. We could have added Drury as well while we were at it, another great playoff performer. Playoff points could have been worth talking about had we actually had a team that was on the brink of contending vs a team built over a 2 week period during a summer.

What was even worse in all of this is on top of sending the better assets and taking NYs problem off their hands, we gave them the space they needed to sign Gaborik, when everyone and their dog knew they would go hard for him. This move actually bit us hard in the ass for years, to the point the superior Subban was thoroughly outplayed by McDonagh on his way to the cup finals, despite his average season in 08-09.

 

[Andrei79]

While Edmonton is an outlier to be sure, there is still a valuable lesson to be learnt from them. Yes, management of that team has been horrendous for as long as we can remember. And yes, their top 10 picks have been hit and miss for the better part of a decade.

But a massive reason that team has struggled to fill out a competent roster was not as much the total bust of Yakupov and potential bust of Puljujarvi, but rather the lack of quality picks in the later rounds of the draft. People tease Buffalo and Edmonton for being stuck in mediocrity for as long as we can remember, but both teams have had that in common: horrible drafting in rounds 2-7.

As I mentioned in a prior post, hitting on your top 5 picks is invaluable, but filling out your team using the deeper rounds of the draft is almost as important, and something both teams have lacked for a long time.

So yes, your point is well-taken, picking high and picking right is very key for success, but something you may be missing is also how important it is to hit in the later rounds. The fact Bergevin "claims" to aim to continue building for the future, whether that is by trading vets this year or whatnot, despite the surprising success story the Habs have been thus far this year, is a sign of a shift in mentality- and a welcome one at that. If he follows through on that, I will be pleased. I do not necessarily want to see this team tank this year for a top pick as you seem to imply, but I do want that focus on the future to be reinforced. We have a handful of top picks again this upcoming draft- hold them and perhaps acquire more, but don't go all-out firesale and mess with the current team too much. There's clearly a good foundation here.

You can't really say I'm missing that part. That part wasn't really ever up for debate here. I think you could go back in such similar threads and consistently see that just picking high and doing nothing else is not what anyone is proposing. A quick sift through the rebuild thread would show you one such post by myself.

 

[Andrei79]

Scrubadam's point isn't totally for nothing, to be fair. Andrei79 conveniently missed that 8 of the last 10 Cups were won by the same three teams. You're right, there aren't enough Cups to go around for all top 2 picks to win one, but when the same few teams win it consistently, you have to start thinking that the bigger reason for those Cup wins was not the fact that they had a top 2 pick on their team, but rather that the teams themselves were very well constructed. Hockey is more of a team sport than say, basketball, where championships can be won on the back of one or two players. There's a reason some of hockey's greatest have never won a Cup.

So of course, Crosby, Doughty and Kane were massive factors in their teams' Cup wins - but the construction of the team around them was really the key.

I think both scrubadam and Andrei79 cherrypicked the same stat to suit their own narratives, when really the answer was somewhere in between.

Yes, it is "convenient" that I missed the fact the cup winning teams wholly built their teams around their 1st and 2nd overall picks.

Remember when Anaheim could win without Niedermayer and Pronger? Neither do I. This is about as close to a team you can find that built through transactions and not the draft. Yet, these top players were available at the very top of the draft. And their high end depth players came off a generational draft year.

Do you remember when people point out to every player but Crosby and Malkin as reasons for them being cup favorites ? Strangely enough, neither do I. It's almost as if the expectations of a team winning comes from it having the very high end players in the league. It's almost as if this has been true for pretty much the entire existence of the NHL, with the odd exception here and there.

Bergevin has been showing you for years that depth can be built. What's the much harder task is finding players good enought to build it around.

 

[Sorinth]

To be fair....How exactly did he opt in?
He got picks for taking on Mason's contract but between that 4th and that 7th round pick...he got Armia which to me as the 2011 16th overall pick was the real prize he was looking for not those bottom round picks. Could have better picks if he let Armia in Winnipeg. But Armia makes this team a better team for this season.

I have my doubts that we could've gotten better picks because Winnipeg wanted to move on from Armia as well. Also many claimed when we did get Armia that we would simply turn around and trade him for a pick at trade deadline and so his acquisition was in fact a rebuilding move much like Toronto picked up some vets on 1 year deals to try to get extra picks at the trade deadline.

Kotkaniemi is a good example to me also. If the plan wasn't to compete why take him for the ride?
He's making the team more competitive and it would have been easy to just send him down for another year and just play a scrubs on the 3rd line instead and making the team bad....like Vancouver did with Pettersson with last year.

The decision of where Kotkaniemi played should've been about what's best for his development. And a case can be made that his development was/is best served in the NHL. A comparison to Pettersson makes no sense considering Pettersson didn't attend Vancouver's training camp last year, didn't want to sign a contract and flat out said "I'm not ready for the NHL"

So there's was a lot of moves made to keep this team competitive...or if you prefer, he wasn't really commited to have another rebuilding year.

I mean think about it for a second, the team just finished near the bottom of the league, if you do absolutely nothing and ice the same team then chances are good that you'll end up at the bottom of the league again next year. So right off the bat doing nothing is rebuilding. But we didn't do nothing, we traded away our leading scorer for 6 of the past 7 years for a prospect and a cap dump. You can't seriously believe adding a guy like Armia is somehow a sign that we were actually trying to make the team more competitive. It's just ridiculous, Bergevin was rebuilding last summer, he didn't go all in on a rebuild but he legitimately was making rebuilding moves.

 

[Grate n Colorful Oz]

And this changes what in terms of how bad the deal was, exactly ? You understand that the "most astute" would also point out that McDonagh was not average but actually had a very translatable game, one which ended up translating into a first pair defenseman. See how debatable the Brook/Poehling/Romanov rankings are ? I could point to you posters who "rightfully" see each one as the best prospect and two groups of them will be wrong. Yet, trading one of them for Eric Staal would still be brutal without needing hindsight.


The irony of someone seemingly blaming Gomez' game on depression when 1. his game was already showing signs of decline before the trade 2. trying to put all of his game on depression when his game declining could very well be a precipitating factor for it in itself. 3. Assuming a poster could not, in fact, be working in that very field of psychiatry, doing things like, well, diagnosing depressions.



And yet the Rangers had no qualms getting rid of his playoff production in favor of a prospect with a "very average season" and a coked up winger. Rangers fans had no qualms about celebrating the fact they got rid of a cap hit that cost them almost 14% of their cap at one point. We could have added Drury as well while we were at it, another great playoff performer. Playoff points could have been worth talking about had we actually had a team that was on the brink of contending vs a team built over a 2 week period during a summer.

What was even worse in all of this is on top of sending the better assets and taking NYs problem off their hands, we gave them the space they needed to sign Gaborik, when everyone and their dog knew they would go hard for him. This move actually bit us hard in the ass for years, to the point the superior Subban was thoroughly outplayed by McDonagh on his way to the cup finals, despite his average season in 08-09.

Did Gaborik win them a cup? Did McDonagh? On the back of what? Kreider injuring Price?

Gomez had 14 points in 17 playoff games in 09-10? On the back of what, losing their MVP Markov at the 8th game of the playoffs?

You're still giving me the fanbase authorative argument. Or the clubs. Let's not talk about the playoff stats, let's brush it aside, conveniently.

This is the point where I let go because you really really have a narrative set in your mind and you keep disregarding things that go against your narrative.

Those comment about psychiatry is further proof. I never assumed anything, You talk about Rangers fans seeing a decline, when the actual stats show a very slight decline in season stats and playoff stats that were up to his usual standards. He then maintained both in his first season with the habs, completely removing any correlation as to his subsequent true decline that saw him go from a 0,60/0,70 player in the reg and 0,80/0,90 ppg player in the playoffs (both with the Habs) to a player who could barely keep control of the puck.

Also, as someone who has lived through depression, your comment about his bad play being a factor in his depression is gratuitous (it's actually degueulasse, vraiment) and only serves to maintain your biased narrative. I'd suggest you go read about depression and realize just how ridiculous that comment was. Seriously, depression is incredibly disabling and the factors that create its onset are predispositions that are created in childhood and prenataly.

If you're at the point where you need to pretend this, I have nothing else to say to you.

 

[scrubadam]

To be fair....How exactly did he opt in?
He got picks for taking on Mason's contract but between that 4th and that 7th round pick...he got Armia which to me as the 2011 16th overall pick was the real prize he was looking for not those bottom round picks. Could have better picks if he let Armia in Winnipeg. But Armia makes this team a better team for this season.

Kotkaniemi is a good example to me also. If the plan wasn't to compete why take him for the ride?
He's making the team more competitive and it would have been easy to just send him down for another year and just play a scrubs on the 3rd line instead and making the team bad....like Vancouver did with Pettersson with last year.

So there's was a lot of moves made to keep this team competitive...or if you prefer, he wasn't really commited to have another rebuilding year.

he opted in by taking the 5th worst team and making it worse (on paper). Taking the 3rd worse offense and making it worse (on paper). The teams number 1 D was guranteed to miss the first 25 games or so and he did nothing to replace him. He basically let half of our D be filled with AHLers until Weber came back.

The only person on here who had faith in this team is Too Legit, who I will give props always felt we would be a bubble team. Everyone else expected the team to be bad. All the moves were not seen as making a the 5th worst team last year better. If the team was not competative last year I don't see how all of a sudden adding Armia/Tatar/Domi can be seen as "improving" the team, again if we base it on where those players were at the end of the season.

The team overperformed. Carried by Domi/Tatar to start the season and now Weber and Price.

I mean its would be as revisitionist as saying that LA/PHI/NJD all decided to tank this season because they are in the bottom of the league.

 

[scrubadam]

Good, then let's bank on landing the players we need in draft positions where the odds are overwhelmingly worse.

All I am saying that just saying lets draft top 5 and poof we will be the Pens is not a serious answer. There has to be more than lose as much as possible, draft and voila. Because the odds are greater you will land a player who DOES NOT take you to the cup than you get one who does. The team already has 3 top 5 picks on it so even the habs are showing the rule is true.

I think there needs to be better ideas than lets tank or else we will be stuck in mediocrity forever. Saying tank and draft top 5 or top 2 is the same thing as saying anything can happen in the playoffs. Coin a new phrase, you just have to lose enough and anything can happen at the draft

 

[Sorinth]

So, he traded for roster players, added one actually, and kept all of Byron, Petry, Weber and Price. Those are rebuilding moves ? Remember what the Leafs did when they decided they'd opt for a rebuild ?

When you finish at the bottom of league doing nothing is inherently rebuilding. And if you are arguing that you have to trade every vet player and not acquire any depth players then Toronto is a bad example as they kept guys like JVR, Bozak and went out and signed guys like Parenteau.

 

[JohnLennon]

Yes, it is "convenient" that I missed the fact the cup winning teams wholly built their teams around their 1st and 2nd overall picks.

Remember when Anaheim could win without Niedermayer and Pronger? Neither do I. This is about as close to a team you can find that built through transactions and not the draft. Yet, these top players were available at the very top of the draft. And their high end depth players came off a generational draft year.

Do you remember when people point out to every player but Crosby and Malkin as reasons for them being cup favorites ? Strangely enough, neither do I. It's almost as if the expectations of a team winning comes from it having the very high end players in the league. It's almost as if this has been true for pretty much the entire existence of the NHL, with the odd exception here and there.

Bergevin has been showing you for years that depth can be built. What's the much harder task is finding players good enought to build it around.

You're missing a crucial point: None of those teams had a draft lottery to contend with - something that makes tanking an infinitely less tempting solution. There's a reason you see the modern rebuilds (the Rangers, the Canucks, the Canadiens) not focusing on tanking as much, but shifting more towards a "rebuild-on-the-fly" mentality. You rarely see a firesale the likes of which Toronto endured many years ago, and there's good reason for it. I'm not saying you support a firesale, but there seems to be a fetishization of it, specifically in these threads. It just isn't as viable an option anymore for rebuilding a team.

Sure, I understand trading vets to get picks and prospects, but banking on getting a top two pick isn't something teams can look at as a reliable option anymore.

And to clarify, I never discounted the importance of players the likes of Crosby and Malkin in winning Cups, but rather pointed to excellent team building as a primary reason for Stanley Cup success. There are numerous examples of stars who haven't won Cups, and over the last ten years, only three teams make up the vast majority of Cup wins, which should tell you something. Now combine that with the low likelihood of even winning a lottery pick, and the viability of tanking is not high anymore.

 

[ZUKI]

Teuvo got traded to Carolina the week before Shaw. MB missed the boat. Money to Shaw could've been used to insulate Bickell's salary and get Teraveinen.

hum ...
MB missed the boat on Teraveinen ? If Chicago tried to deal with Bergie and that this last offered less than Carolina i would agree , but we don't even know if Bowman contacted him about the availability of his young player ?

 

[417]

You're missing a crucial point: None of those teams had a draft lottery to contend with - something that makes tanking an infinitely less tempting solution. There's a reason you see the modern rebuilds (the Rangers, the Canucks, the Canadiens) not focusing on tanking as much, but shifting more towards a "rebuild-on-the-fly" mentality. You rarely see a firesale the likes of which Toronto endured many years ago, and there's good reason for it. I'm not saying you support a firesale, but there seems to be a fetishization of it, specifically in these threads. It just isn't as viable an option anymore for rebuilding a team.

Sure, I understand trading vets to get picks and prospects, but banking on getting a top two pick isn't something teams can look at as a reliable option anymore.

And to clarify, I never discounted the importance of players the likes of Crosby and Malkin in winning Cups, but rather pointed to excellent team building as a primary reason for Stanley Cup success. There are numerous examples of stars who haven't won Cups, and over the last ten years, only three teams make up the vast majority of Cup wins, which should tell you something. Now combine that with the low likelihood of even winning a lottery pick, and the viability of tanking is not high anymore.

Yet the team building aspect seems to get forgotten or shoved aside...and the fact the Pens drafted those 2 after tanking seems to be all that matters.

That's really just scratching the surface of their success over the last dozen years.

 

[Grate n Colorful Oz]

hum ...
MB missed the boat on Teraveinen ? If Chicago tried to deal with Bergie and that this last offered less than Carolina i would agree , but we don't even know if Bowman contacted him about the availability of his young player ?

It's kinda Bergevin's job to know the avaibility, especially with such close contact with Chicago.

Come on, let's not try to pile on the excuses. It was a missed opportunity, whether Bergevin contacted them and refused because of Bickell or whether he didn't communicate with them at all, it's still is a missed opportunity for a better player than Andrew Shaw or Lars Eller.

 

[Andrei79]

Did Gaborik win them a cup? Did McDonagh?

Guess which finals McDonagh played in. A clue would be the following: Stanley's.

Gomez had 14 points in 17 playoff games in 09-10?

You're still giving me the fanbase authorative argument. Or the clubs. Let's not talk about the playoff stats, let's brush it aside, conveniently.

Yes, I will obviously point out the opinions of people who followed him throughout the year to support something that is an opinion in itself, meaning his play.

This is the point where I let go because you really really have a narrative set in your mind and you keep disregarding things that go against your narrative.

Please do let go, it's hard to follow what your points are when the only substance you can come up with is how I have set "biases" and "narratives". It is almost as if this wasn't precisely an exchange of opinions implying that yes, biases and narratives were pretty much inherent to the act of it. Are you sure you understand what a message board is ?

Those comment about psychiatry is further proof. I never assumed anything, You talk about Rangers fans seeing a decline, when the actual stats show a very slight decline in season stats and playoff stats that were up to his usual standards. He then maintained both in his first season with the habs, completely removing any correlation as to his subsequent true decline that saw him go from a 0,60/0,70 player in the reg and 0,80/0,90 ppg player in the playoffs (both with the Habs) to a player who could barely keep control of the puck.

And yet he played no where near the commanding game he did while he peaked following the lockout, which earned him a contract closer to what an impact player earned than a sub-60 point player. He managed a productive run on the Rangers on the back of a much more impressive performance by Jagr and was more or less a good player on the subsequent run. Nothing that would give any indication that moving a high valued asset for him would be a net positive, not at that cap number. Had he not dropped as far as he had, the deal would still be a negative... which is what the point was the whole time here you know, "without hindsight".

Also, as someone who has lived through depression, your comment about his bad play being a factor in his depression is gratuitous (it's actually degueulasse, vraiment) and only serves to maintain your biased narrative. I'd suggest you go read about depression and realize just how ridiculous that comment was. Seriously, depression is incredibly disabling and the factors that create its onset are predispositions that are created in childhood and prenataly.

If you're at the point where you need to pretend this, I have nothing else to say to you.

I'm not the slightest bit interested in going on this tangent here. It has nothing to do with the main point here, which was the deal being brutal in itself, without the gift of hindsight. But, for someone who keeps mentioning how everyone is biased, you seem very closed minded on discussing differing opinions. What you feel is "dégueulasse" is actually well worth discussing, but what do I know. You clearly know me, I don't have any experience whatsoever about the subject and I should start reading about it, so what's the point in stooping to my level.

 

[Andrei79]

All I am saying that just saying lets draft top 5 and poof we will be the Pens is not a serious answer. There has to be more than lose as much as possible, draft and voila. Because the odds are greater you will land a player who DOES NOT take you to the cup than you get one who does. The team already has 3 top 5 picks on it so even the habs are showing the rule is true.

I think there needs to be better ideas than lets tank or else we will be stuck in mediocrity forever. Saying tank and draft top 5 or top 2 is the same thing as saying anything can happen in the playoffs. Coin a new phrase, you just have to lose enough and anything can happen at the draft

I agree, it's not enough. But, it's the highest probability of netting elite talent and a higher probability of working then hoping a mid-level team somehow becomes good enough through late firsts and FAs that have never worked out. The rest can't be ignored, but I don't think anyone would argue against that.

 

[ZUKI]

It's kinda Bergevin's job to know the avaibility, especially with such close contact with Chicago.

Come on, let's not try to pile on the excuses. It was a missed opportunity, whether Bergevin contacted them and refused because of Bickell or whether he didn't communicate with them at all, it's still is a missed opportunity for a better player than Andrew Shaw or Lars Eller.

S P E C U L A T I O N
Come on ! you should have said " let's not try to pile on the excuses that are not going my way "

 

[Andrei79]

You're missing a crucial point: None of those teams had a draft lottery to contend with - something that makes tanking an infinitely less tempting solution. There's a reason you see the modern rebuilds (the Rangers, the Canucks, the Canadiens) not focusing on tanking as much, but shifting more towards a "rebuild-on-the-fly" mentality. You rarely see a firesale the likes of which Toronto endured many years ago, and there's good reason for it. I'm not saying you support a firesale, but there seems to be a fetishization of it, specifically in these threads. It just isn't as viable an option anymore for rebuilding a team.

Sure, I understand trading vets to get picks and prospects, but banking on getting a top two pick isn't something teams can look at as a reliable option anymore.

And to clarify, I never discounted the importance of players the likes of Crosby and Malkin in winning Cups, but rather pointed to excellent team building as a primary reason for Stanley Cup success. There are numerous examples of stars who haven't won Cups, and over the last ten years, only three teams make up the vast majority of Cup wins, which should tell you something. Now combine that with the low likelihood of even winning a lottery pick, and the viability of tanking is not high anymore.

I agree that this is a fair point. With both the facts the lottery makes it harder to pick high picks consecutively and the remaining cap circumventing deals slowly being phased out, there should be different types of team winning cups in the next few years. But, I feel there's a high chance of elite teams with elite talent still competing and winning over lesser talent more spread out through the lineup. That's where there's still a good chance picking high will remain the surest way to finding that elite talent.

 

[DAChampion]

It is a valid point that Pittsburgh, Washington, LA, and Chicago tanked prior to the modern draft lottery.

An interesting issue with respect to Pittsburgh is that they were able to win three Cups in spite of numerous mistakes:
- Weak draft choices in terms of Jordan Staal and Ryan Whitney;
- Hiring Therrien;
- Impotence on the UFA market;
- Trading picks for rentals like Hossa that they failed to keep;

It's because Crosby and Malkin are just that good. Most teams can't survive making that many errors .

 

[DAChampion]

Another valid point is that the majority of Washington, Pittsburgh, LA, and Chicago are no longer Cup contenders.

Who are the Cup contenders today?
Did they tank?

 

[MarkovsKnee]

Whoops hit a 1,000.