Replace the Draft Lottery with an Auction

[Halla]

give every team that misses the same odds...bye bye tanking

 

[johnjm22]

Make it simple.

31 ball lottery for the first round. Each team gets one ball.

The reaming six rounds (2 through 7) are the inverse order of the 1st round

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Although, I do agree with you that something needs to be fixed because there are teams that don't field competitive teams for years. They don't draft their needs to be competitive, but draft the player solely for drawing fans and revenue instead.

Really? Can you cite examples where teams took a guy with a high draft pick that they admitted was less talented than someone else available, but picked that player solely for revenue and putting fans in the seats and did so intentionally to keep themselves less competitive?

 

[Ted Hoffman]

give every team that misses the same odds...bye bye tanking

That's worse because non-contending but still decent teams now have more incentive to tank.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Make it simple.

31 ball lottery for the first round. Each team gets one ball.

The reaming six rounds (2 through 7) are the inverse order of the 1st round

See my prior comment. And there will never be a reverse (snake) draft except in a 2005 example, because it more evenly spreads out talent which works to the advantage of better teams.

 

[stator]

Really? Can you cite examples where teams took a guy with a high draft pick that they admitted was less talented than someone else available, but picked that player solely for revenue and putting fans in the seats and did so intentionally to keep themselves less competitive?

You need to ask that question? I'm sure there are plenty here that have the same team in mind. Also, there was no talk of "less talented" other than by you. Nice troll.

 

[Dynamite Time]

Go back and read the OP that lays out the premise for this thread. According to it, there's a problem with teams being bad and loading up on high picks, and so the draft need to be fixed.

Hey bro, you “need to be fixed”. I read the OP+ and put in an opinion of my own about the draft; against a team just loading up on picks.

Kudos

 

[Lemmiwinks]

Personally I would prefer the lottery be replaced by musical chairs. It would be pay-per-view level entertainment watching the GMs scramble around a stage, their jobs on the line. It would also incentivize having bigger, stronger GMs, which would help bring us back the 'old school' hockey we all love and miss.

 

[Lemmiwinks]

Seriously, though, as a fan of a team that has dropped position in every modern lottery, I still think it's the best system available.

 

[37Bergenov14]

Powerhouses don't miss the playoffs.

Eventually they will, unless of course a system like I responded to lets them only briefly dip out of the playoffs before being gifted a reprieve.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Hey bro, you “need to be fixed”. I read the OP+ and put in an opinion of my own about the draft; against a team just loading up on picks.

Kudos

In back-to-back posts: "I think the system is fine the way it is, and I think the system needs to be fixed to stop teams loading up on [really good] draft picks."

............... Ok.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

You need to ask that question? I'm sure there are plenty here that have the same team in mind. Also, there was no talk of "less talented" other than by you. Nice troll.

So you lob a claim out with zero details backing it up, I ask for an example, and you respond with a vague non-answer and end it with calling me a troll.

This is a perfect example of why all the hand-wringing about the "problem of teams tanking" is overblown. Great leaps in logic get made and statements get trotted out, and no one has anything to back them up when questioned; the few of us asking questions and pointing out the inconsistencies in the statements are just haters.

 

[Classic Devil]

The entry draft and lottery are fundamentally broken. The draft rewards poor teams but is broken in that poor team building becomes an optimal strategy to amass talent. The lottery is a band-aid solution to severe hemorrhaging. Basically it adds randomness to discourage tanking but in the end it just adds randomness. Doing poorly is still optimal, just not as reliable. And now teams randomly get franchise and generational talents even if some are more likely to than others.

My idea is a bit radical but basically the draft lottery is scrapped and replaced with an auction.

- Teams use points to bid on players.
- Teams are allocated points based on how they low they finish for parity.
- Instead of trading picks, you can trade points, which allows for more granularity. (The number of points distributed would necessarily need to be large numbers to ensure enough players are bid on each year.)
- Tweak the point distribution to discourage tanking and make it more advantageous to have assets to deal at the trade deadline.
- Points have a lifespan of up to 2 (3?) years to balance out strong and weak years and to ensure players are bid on each year.
- Each team must place bid on a minimum number of players (60?).
- Players are eligible for more bonuses depending on how many points are spent on them.

Benefits:
- Skill not luck based, while still giving some advantages to weaker teams.
- Trade deadline becomes more beneficial to middling teams. They can trade off assets to higher tier teams for points to leverage as funds for obtaining franchise players rather than be stuck in a cycle of mediocrity.
- Balances years with no franchise players and years with multiple franchise players. If you aren't happy with the players available you can save them up for the following year or spend fewer points.
- Rewards asset development. Middling teams that develop good players can still get good value out of them rather than trading them for middling lottery tickets.
- Would be significantly more entertaining to see GMs bid on players.

Issues:
- Bad optics, players are treated as assets (not that they aren't currently through trades but this is a step up by creating a virtual currency)
- Would remove any pretense out of the prestige of being drafted.
- Could potentially create too much player movement. A generational talent is available. Chaos ensues.
- Converting from one system to another. How should picks be converted into points? One is based on the future (picks), while the other is based on the past (points). It seems difficult if not impossible to reconcile the two systems.
- If there are any imbalances in the parameters, the system could quickly become degenerate.
- Could destroy parity if a few teams are significantly better at gaming the system than others.

It's not a realistic solution but I think it addresses most of the issues fans have with the draft lottery. There are clear drawbacks mostly for the players that would ensure that this would never be implemented but I thought it was an interesting thought experiment. And maybe someone has an idea that could be used to mitigate those problems.

Every team spends all their points on the 1st player in the draft when you have the potential superstar. The worst team gets the player, by virtue of having the most points. You thus restore incentive for tanking, which is what the lottery was designed to get rid of in the first place.

In fact, it's even worse because you can tank a season knowing that you can hang on to points for a year or two for a future generational player. You might have teams that choose to tank for years to stock up points.

And if you don't have the points weighted reasonably well towards non-playoff and worse teams, then you have teams get stuck in a perpetual trap where they can never get enough points to buy the players they want. And, since you might buy fewer players for more points, you end up forcing mediocre teams into significantly worse traps if they have a few bad busts.

 

[Classic Devil]

give every team that misses the same odds...bye bye tanking

Hello perpetual underclass.

 

[glovesave_35]

Eventually they will, unless of course a system like I responded to lets them only briefly dip out of the playoffs before being gifted a reprieve.

Who is to say that once they downturn they will just miss the playoffs? Last year the Blackhawks were 25th of 31 teams.