Tanking and the NHL's Lack of Parity: They Go Hand in Hand

[Colorado Avalanche]

Yeah but those teams(sans the 'fluke' Bruins) didn't get to win a championship so therefore they haven't had it good enough and deserve more shots at top picks.

The Colorado Avalanche got to draft MacKinnon pretty recently so who cares that their fans just had to suffer through a historically awful garbage fire of a season am I right?

MacKinnon and Barkov's difference is marginal at best, some might even argue Barkov is better. It was great draft year and all top-4 were very good players, Jones, Drouin, Barkov and Mackinnon. Any of those would have been great for us.

So while we got lucky, It didn't really help us in anyway. We were guaranteed to have top-3 anyway, I think.

 

[theaub]

Yep, that's terrible for the game. Nobody wants to see the same guy every season making the Finals. It's too boring.

TV ratings and ad revenues certainly disagree

 

[SnuggaRUDE]

The fix through the draft is to increase the minimum age for eligibility. Drafting 20 year olds would take a lot of the variability out of the draft. Particularly the later rounds.

This would eliminate much of the luck that commentators miss-attributed to skill.

 

[LeafsNation75]

this is quite true.

that said I think the rules in place are fine.

I do feel kinda sorry for Colorado. Literally finished dead last, and not even a top 3 pick. It's not like their intentions was to tank too, like some teams going into the year. they just sucked really bad.

so there are 2 lessons learned.

1, finishing last does not guarantee a top 2 pick anymore.
2, you don't need to be a dead last team in order to have a chance at the top 3 pick.

So far under the new draft lottery format Toronto is the only team who finished in the bottom 3 and was able to get a 1st overall pick out if it in 2016. Now even though they had the best odds going into the lottery they won with a combination of numbers (6-8-5-13) where they could only win if a #13 was selected, so they also got very lucky. When it came to the 2nd and 3rd picks in 2016 it was won by teams outside the bottom 3 and as we all know the 1st, 2nd and 3rd picks for this year was won by teams all outside the bottom 3.

 

[beetee15]

excellent post. back in the day having no salary cap helped teams who didn't tank even things out. now if you're not awful you'll never be elite. With some form of sorcery my team grabs the #2 pick this year, but without a GIANT stroke of luck we probably get another mediocre pick and our tires just spin in the mud.