Hi All,
So I've been thinking about this and wanted to do a bit of a case study to see the following: what would the NHL look like if it had 28 teams instead of 30, and how this would impact the talent pool & parity around the league.
So what I'm suggesting is the following: We find 28 participants to act as the GM of an NHL team, and then we will have 2 drafts:
1) We have an absolutely fresh, clean-slate draft of existing NHL players to build a team. There can be some type of lottery system (or, failing that, an arbitrary system) to determine the order of selections. Then, we will have several rounds of a draft, say 23 roster players, to build our team's roster.
2) After the first draft is completed, we will have a 2nd draft for young prospects/undrafted players not currently in the NHL to form our team's prospect pool. (The exact number or rounds & draft order will be somehow determined).
The purpose of this experiment, besides pure fun, is to asess what the NHL would look like and how the teams would all compare if there were 2 less teams, and what that would do for each team's roster. (If people would prefer, we could do 26 teams instead of 28).
What inspired this idea is the amount of seemingly glaring weaknesses that many teams are experiencing and have failed to address. For example, CGY needing quality centermen, WSH & SJ being short on defense, MIN & NSH needing scoring depth, Pittsburgh needing scoring wingers, TB & PHI needing established goaltending talent, etc.
The way I see it is, there is not enough excess of talent in the stronger teams to account for the lack of talent on the other side of the ledger; nor is there a great excess of top-tier players NOT playing in the NHL in other leagues in NA or Europe. The salary cap has helped weaker teams be competitive, but it hasn't quite bridged the gap of making ALL teams truly contending competitors. So my assertion is that while the quality of hockey and it's players is greater now than it's ever been, the talent pool of hockey players hasn't quite caught up to the NHL's rate of expansion. Obviously the NHL is not going to contract, and things will probably catch up in 5 to 8 years or so, but I would like to see what the league would look like if there was a hypothetical contraction, or if there were not quite so many teams.
So if anyone is interested in putting on their GM hat or otherwise contribute to this experiment, please let me know!
Draft Selections Spreadsheet:https://spreadsheets0.google.com/cc...authkey=CKzc0JsO&hl=en&authkey=CKzc0JsO#gid=0
So I've been thinking about this and wanted to do a bit of a case study to see the following: what would the NHL look like if it had 28 teams instead of 30, and how this would impact the talent pool & parity around the league.
So what I'm suggesting is the following: We find 28 participants to act as the GM of an NHL team, and then we will have 2 drafts:
1) We have an absolutely fresh, clean-slate draft of existing NHL players to build a team. There can be some type of lottery system (or, failing that, an arbitrary system) to determine the order of selections. Then, we will have several rounds of a draft, say 23 roster players, to build our team's roster.
2) After the first draft is completed, we will have a 2nd draft for young prospects/undrafted players not currently in the NHL to form our team's prospect pool. (The exact number or rounds & draft order will be somehow determined).
The purpose of this experiment, besides pure fun, is to asess what the NHL would look like and how the teams would all compare if there were 2 less teams, and what that would do for each team's roster. (If people would prefer, we could do 26 teams instead of 28).
What inspired this idea is the amount of seemingly glaring weaknesses that many teams are experiencing and have failed to address. For example, CGY needing quality centermen, WSH & SJ being short on defense, MIN & NSH needing scoring depth, Pittsburgh needing scoring wingers, TB & PHI needing established goaltending talent, etc.
The way I see it is, there is not enough excess of talent in the stronger teams to account for the lack of talent on the other side of the ledger; nor is there a great excess of top-tier players NOT playing in the NHL in other leagues in NA or Europe. The salary cap has helped weaker teams be competitive, but it hasn't quite bridged the gap of making ALL teams truly contending competitors. So my assertion is that while the quality of hockey and it's players is greater now than it's ever been, the talent pool of hockey players hasn't quite caught up to the NHL's rate of expansion. Obviously the NHL is not going to contract, and things will probably catch up in 5 to 8 years or so, but I would like to see what the league would look like if there was a hypothetical contraction, or if there were not quite so many teams.
So if anyone is interested in putting on their GM hat or otherwise contribute to this experiment, please let me know!
Draft Selections Spreadsheet:https://spreadsheets0.google.com/cc...authkey=CKzc0JsO&hl=en&authkey=CKzc0JsO#gid=0
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