Just get rid of the draft. All players are free agents.
All the best players will sign with the Leafs of course.
Best solution IMO even if its a bit outlandish. Give every team "X amount of draft points". Worse teams get more, better teams get less, on a sliding scale
Then have a auction for 1st and 2nd round draft picks (later round picks can be bid or, or set a reserve price of "y" amount of points for a certain round). Any team has access to any pick, but they may have to pay up. The best team in the NHL could have a crack at a top 3 pick, but it probably means they only get 1 or 2 other late round picks. If things get crazy and teams bid all points, last place will still get access to 1st overall because they have the most points totals
A bottom 5 team could also play it smart and load up on second round picks and stand on sidelines as team go crazy for top 10 picks
What this solves:
- Issue that good teams dont get access to high draft picks. Now they do, but theyll have to pay up. They already get break in FA, so theyll have to pay at draft. But atleast theyll have the chance
-Bottom teams still have access to the best picks. But its not a mononply as it was before. If a 15th place team goes all in, theyll be forced to match and beat that. This will result in them getting less 2nd-7th round picks
What this doesnt solve:
-Tanking. Teams will still tank for that last place to get more points. But tanking is not glorious. You have to sell off assets for cheap, and by you not entering the UFA race, it drives down costs and increases UFA supply for other teams (to benefit). Not to mention it ruins your teams image for future UFAs. And the reward is a 18 year old prospect who may or may not turn out in 3 years
And in the above suggestion, you can modify things to decrease tanking. To satisfy some owners or GMs you could incorporate Doans "idea" and have the team the finishes with most points after elimination get "x" draft points as a reward
Of course best solution is to end the draft and let UFA market and cap figure tanking out. But this atleast introduces a method to end the draft monopoly of bottom 5 teams to the best prospects