Quote:
Originally Posted by Bnhershy
right but my point is that if there's a team that is so bad that they simply can't win hockey games, the system has to provide them with the ability to improve. a draft tourney would punish a team like that and at the very worst, result in the loss of the franchise altogether down the road due to a fan base with nothing to cheer for
|
You are falling into the same trap that causes all these teams to tank in the first place, which is the assumption that they can't get better on their own and can only do so by getting the best pick in the draft. What this ignores is that draft position matters less in the NHL than in any sport except baseball. Sure the first overall selection almost always guarantees you a quality NHL player but it doesn't guarantee you the best player and it doesn't guarantee you success in the future. So instead of a team turning itself around by trying to get competitive sooner than later the team will mortgage it's ability to compete now so that it can build for some far off fairytale future where it will compete when the reality is that if they were capable of scouting and developing talent well that they'd be producing quality NHL players regardless of their draft position.
Simply put if you eliminate the incentive for teams to tank and go for higher draft picks then you eliminate that sort of thinking. You wouldn't kill the ability of teams to fail but you'd create greater accountability and you'd quell any urge to engage in tanking. So yes there is a chance that you'd cost yourself a franchise or two that simply cannot get the right management team in place to build a half decent team without the benefit of top picks but you must realize how pathetic that franchise would have to be and how maybe that franchise shouldn't be owned by its owner if he really sucks that much at picking managers.
Also, and this is an entirely different topic but if a team cannot survive because it continues to fail well odds are that's going to happen regardless of getting first overall selections or not and more to the point those teams would seemingly be in locals where hockey may not be able to survive long term regardless of the team's ability to put a winner on the ice. So the point of a lottery shouldn't be, "let's rescue these terribly run franchises," it is supposed to be, "let's prevent teams from intentionally sucking." No amount of lottery seems to quell that instinct to suck intentionally so we need new thinking and a new set of incentives. If a team under a new set of incentives really can't get themselves to compete for even a year or two, even if it's just to compete enough to earn a higher pick then my goodness that team must be dreadful. As of yet there hasn't been a franchise to achieve that level of absolute failure so I personally think that if you are using that as an excuse to poo-poo the "draft pick tournament" then I think you are building yourself quite the straw man.
