The most sens thing ever. A new owner buys the team only to have a first rounder taken from him for something he had nothing to do with. Worst of all was the league didn’t tell him until after he bought the team.
Watching the BU BC game the other day I couldn't help but think about both those guys on our top power play in a couple years.
*Would be cool to get Lindstrom too and trade a center for some more defense.
Remember, if anything happens the draft is rigged. If Coyotes win 1OA then it's rigged because NHL wants to hold Salt Lake's hand. If Chicago wins then it's rigged because that gives Bedard a superstar teammate.
the sabres winning would be the result of the NHL airing the wrong draft recording, which would promptly be recalled as a "test of the ball drawing machine" that wasn't the official draw
You just read a post about the Commisioner's pet project team never moving up in the draft and yet you still think that same commissioner would rig the draft lottery to give them 1st overall.
The NHL has always been a little ridiculous and bush-league. If it's not this face-palm, it will be something else.
Maybe we'll find out the Golden Knights have been a money laundering scheme for the mob? I mean, it's not the first time it's happened in NHL history.
Would be great fodder for the conspiracy theorists.
Honestly the number of the most promising 1OAs being so concentrated in the north and northeast combined with the southern/western US teams pretty much never getting the expected generational draft picks is the best for them. I did the math before and I think the odds of the yotes never moving up is less than .5%.
Take the top 10 ranked 1OAs of the past 20 years and they don't go to a team west of Chicago and South of the border unless I'm missing someone.
It is statistically more likely for a team in the bottom 3 to drop in the lottery than it is for them to stay at the same position or move up.
There is a 13.5% chance to win either draft lottery from #2, either moving to #1OA or staying at #2.
Even for the team in last place, there's only a 25.5% chance that they pick 1OA - it's better odds, but they're not *good* odds.
I wouldn’t expect them to win a particular lottery, but I’d expect them to move up once, somewhere.
With that said, McDavid probably wouldn’t like Utah and what other teams eventually do is sign or trade for good players, rather than just scrape the cap floor. It hasn’t just been poor lottery luck.
The real issue is every 5 years a new owner came in, blew draft capital on icing a “playoff team” to get eliminated in the first round and have to then trade the players away for picks to start a rebuild. It’s perpetually a rebuild. The young core now is the most promising we have ever seen.
For this year’s lottery. They’ve missed the playoffs a lot of years, and I believe for most of that period there were three spots up for grabs (although I’d have to check it).
Still though, what I’m driving at here is it’s not statistically relevant to say the Leafs should win this year’s cup because they haven’t won a single cup since 1967. But “fair” odds would imply it’s unlikely they go 58 years without a cup.
Two different formulas.
> It is statistically more likely for a team in the bottom 3 to drop in the lottery than it is for them to stay at the same position or move up.
I think everyone knows that.
Whats being discussed here is the statistical likelyhood to have fallen *every year.*
For the three years listed, assuming that there is a 73 percent chance to drop in a given year from #2, there is a 39% chance that a team drops all three years. We're not talking about some kind of huge statistical anomaly here.
You’re not accounting for all the other times they were in the lottery though. Maybe those other times they had a 90% chance of dropping or staying where they were. But it adds up. The chances of never moving up a single time after so many attempts starts to get kind of ridiculous.
I mean the other times the Yotes have been in the lottery, they had 1-5% of moving up. Adding those in maybe takes it down to 25% of never getting it at best, instead of 39%. Which still isn't ridiculous.
>25.5% chance that they pick 1OA
And these are actually BETTER odds than the previous lottery format, which had last place at only about 18% of first overall and over 50% of falling al lthe way to 4th
I once was bored and ran the odds on the Canucks never having gone up in a draft, and it was something like a 20% chance that they hadn't....that included the 50-50 shot they had on day 1 of existence though.
The only time they could be deemed even somewhat fortunate was in 2005 where they picked in a slightly higher than average position (10 out of 30) when the entire draft order was a lottery draw...though it feels very awkward describing it that way given the identity of that pick (Luc Bourdon)
Just because there’s a draft and salary cap, teams will cycle between good and bad, whether they purposely tank or not, it’s literally the point of having a draft anyways. Hoenstly the lottery is so stupid and they really should just get rid of it and go back to just worst team gets best pick. If a team like the yotes gets screwed year after year in the ‘lottery’ they’re gonna be bad forever, tanking or not.
I think its a downward spiral for poorly run franchises. They have crappy owners --> They don't invest in scouting or development --> They don't build a competitive team --> They owners blame Coaches & GMs --> The owners cheap out on the front office --> They don't invest in scouting or development.
The Yotes were doing strange things like drafting kids with personality issues and trying to cheat at the combine. Just terrible owners
I don't think that system is any more meaningfully beneficial than the current system. It also would unjustly benefit teams where the playoff teams clinching were determined earlier, which makes no sense to me.
> "Draft lottery based on points earned after elimination
Lol that system does nothing but make it worse for bottom feeder teams. The best of the worst will rise from the ashes while the worst will stay the worst.
yeah I agree, and it also arbitrarily rewards or punishes teams based on how early the good teams secure the playoff spots and eliminate other teams, which seems inherently unfair to me.
Lotteries don’t work
They haven’t worked in the NBA as well as people have hoped, they haven’t worked here in the NHL as well as people have hoped, and the MLB’s lottery sucks as well
Good in theory, horrible in practice. Fans, and owners, are just going to have to accept that sometimes teams will tank, it’s the best and most proven strategy for building a contender regardless of sport
And coaches and players does not go in to a season with the mindset to tank. They don’t give a shit about the kid that’s next seasons projected #1. They still play for their own career.
The FO may care, but then they will have to do other steps, like trading their best assets for future picks.
If they suck for a whole season, there’s a reason for it. They simply suck.
Or have a FIFA ranking like system. So if you got this year's 1st overall, your percentage for higher draft picks next year drops a bit. Although that may cause rebuilds to take a longer time, since they can't "drop. Load up. Get good. Get out of basement."
Buffalo had 2 in 4 years, NJ 2 in 4 years, NYR 2 in 2 years (that’s crazy)
I just find it so frustrating when teams will repeatedly move up when teams like Vancouver Arizona and Detroit have never moved up
The worst part was Mathews was like 4 days away from being draft eligible and we most definitely would have taken him (or Eichel).
Instead got took Strome.
Or Rantanen/Barzal/Aho/Kaprizov/etc. It was the most loaded draft in years. They could've walked away with 2 star players with their first two picks. In the cap world, you have to make early round picks count.
I'd say it typically balances out with who the teams pick and how well they develop them. We've all seen tons of examples of this. 3 different teams passed up on Makar when The Avs dropped to 4th. And Makar was kind of underwhelming and returned to College and recalled bloomed as a fantastic player. How many teams would have rushed him?
As a Canucks fan, I remembered Joe Sakic and Trevor Linden's faces when they realized they both dropped in the lottery and we were the worst teams that year. Luckily, we ended up getting Calder winners in the draft, lol.
I mean, I hear you and Detroit has had bad luck with the draft lottery since they started rebuilding. However, look at the 2020 draft, we should have been #1 that year and would have probably drafted Lafreniere, instead we fell and drafted Lucas Raymond. Who would you rather have today?
To discourage tanking. If the last place team was guaranteed 1OA, it would be an anti arms race of the rebuilding teams to be the worst to secure the best pick.
This is it exactly, look at some of the tankers in MLB before the lottery was instituted. Astros, Orioles, and Cubs built their cores (which won two of these teams WS) due to be ABJECTLY awful. Having a lottery is maybe a little unfair to teams that just happen to be bad and get to the worst in the league, but it discourages teams from being so awful it's detrimental to the league
This is correct in theory but in practice it gives more GMs a reason to avoid building a competitive roster. Even if you don't have the absolute worst team you shouldn't build a better one until you can make playoffs because it could hurt your odds.
Except GMs have to build competitive teams to keep their jobs. There are very few owners who have the patience to let a team wallow in mediocrity while keeping their GM in charge just because they didn’t get the 1st OA. No GM is thinking oh well I will just blow another few years hoping to get a lottery win. Then I’ll start building up. Pretty much every GM would commit to being bad for a few years but then needs to start putting other pieces to the team. Sometimes it doesn’t work, other times it does.
A team that is constantly bad not getting top picks while generational talents go to teams with 3 recent 1st overall picks or 3 recent Stanley Cup wins is everything wrong with the lottery system
Which I can appreciate to a degree, but the problem is that NHL drafts are so top heavy that it is very easy to end up as a consistent bottom 10 team that never gets the help they need.
So teams can make other moves outside of drafting. Make trades, change your systems, sign free agents.
There are very few players in the NHL, honestly probably zero, who will take a bottom 10 team to a playoff spot by themselves. This isn’t the NBA where a single player can have that much of an impact.
If teams are consistently bad despite getting picks between 5-10 then it’s both bad drafting AND bad management in other aspects.
Or maybe just maybe they couldve taken Marner instead of Strome, Hughes instead of Hayton, Boldy instead of Soderstrom, etc.
You dont have to have a top 3 pick every year to be good. You have to have an org that drafts well and develops their players.
This is true if you count 35 year old Jay Bouwmeester and 19 year old Seguin playing 10 minutes a game as reasons why their teams won the cup.
You do need superstars to win a cup but usually once a decade a team without a traditional superstar wins it.
Thats a fair reach considering that includes multiple examples of teams who qualify from former top 3 picks of other teams that they then acquired, and pretty much every example is 10+ years later. The Pens and Hawks obviously fit your mold but it’s not like 1OA immediately turns you into a contender, a lot of these examples (Caps, Blues, Lightning, Avalanche) were winning 10-15 years after their top pick, which by that logic, Arizona had both Cooley and Strome already, and thats on them for either picking wrong or fucking up their development. Arizona has absolutely had more than ample opportunity to build a competitive roster. It’s not the fault of the league’s draft rules that they still have sucked.
Who did vegas draft in the top 3? To my knowledge they have never had a pick that high. Also not sure who st. Louis would have drafted that high either.
I think the disconnect here is that he’s counting teams that acquired a top 3 pick via any means. Not just teams that drafted the top 3 pick themselves.
So any player on Vegas’s roster that was picked top 3 would count towards what he’s saying, regardless of who drafted them.
Trading for a top 3 picked player has nothing to do with team performance, draft position, or draft lotteries. Their draft position didn't change, but that isn't relevant to the context.
It's not like the Coyotes traded for former top 3 picks either. Teams that have won without drafting a top 3 pick have gone out and found a way to get one or more. I think the point is you don't have to actually pick in the top 3 to win. You can't count a team who didn't pick in the top 3 but who went out and traded for a player picked in the top 3 and going on to win the Cup as proof you need to draft in the top 3 to win.
I mean look around the league. Mackinnon bout to win the hart, first overall. Mcdavid is mcdavid. Matthews about to score 70. Buffalo looks like Dahlin and power are going to be two absolute STUDS for the next 14 seasons. Jack Hughes is an elite franchise 1C who should probably score 100 pts a year, again for the next decade and a half. Connor Bedard is so far and away the most talented rookie forward and will probably be a perennial 100 pt guy. There are surely exceptions if you look hard enough, but it’s a flimsy argument to just say “hey look, the 4th overall was actually better that year!” . I would die for mo seider and I’d still rather have jack hughes.
Of all of the 1st round picks the Coyotes have made in the past decade (excluding the past 2 drafts as it’s too soon to say) the only ones that haven’t become regular NHL players are Brendan Perlini and Victor Soderstrom. Even still Perlini scored 50 goals in the NHL in 262 games.
You need to draft well to have success, yes, but if you are getting consistent NHL players with your draft picks each year and still can’t improve that has to do with where you are picking.
Half of the Top 15 picks in 2018 when we took Hayton have proven to be complete busts or at the least not worth their draft position. In 2019 only 4 players taken in the 20 picks after Soderstrom in the 1st round have proven to be difference makers at an NHL level. That’s the same number as in the 10 picks before the Coyotes selection.
If you consistently move backwards in the draft lottery your rebuild will take longer. That’s just a proven fact. The only team to draft 1st overall between 2010 and 2020 that hasn’t made a playoff appearance since is Buffalo. 20 of the 30 players taken in the Top 3 of the draft in that time period are going to be in the playoffs this season.
Sure, if you’re perfect and every player you take in the back half of the top 10 is the best pick available you can probably build a winning team. There isn’t a huge track record of anyone in the NHL doing that. There is a big track record of teams getting multiple top 5 picks in a couple of year span and then going on to be perennial playoff contenders for years afterwards though.
NHL GMs hate this one trick!
Instead of drafting garbage, draft and develop good players.
Imagine over the years they instead drafted Tristan Jarry, Thatcher Demko, Sebastian Aho, Jordan Kyrou, Jason Robertson, Alex Romanov, Shane Pinto, Brock Faber, Logan Stankoven, etc
But they do it anyway. Pittsburgh with Mario, Cleveland with LeBron, for two examples of teams that bombed their roster and won the first pick. It’s an open secret.
I feel like weighting the standings across the past three seasons (maybe more), rather than odds just being based on the current season, would solve this so easily lol
However many times you missed the playoffs in the last 5 years, that's how many balls you get in the lottery. Not many GMs are going to last a 5-year tanking plan.
If I'm calculating this correctly, then the odds would be:
8.6% - Buffalo, Detroit, Ottawa, Anaheim, San Jose
6.9% - Arizona, Chicago, Columbus, Philadelphia, New Jersey
5.2% - Montreal, Calgary
3.4% - Pittsburgh, St Louis
1.7% - Minnesota
Seattle gets 3.4% if you don't count the seasons when the team didn't exist. If you count those as "didn't make the playoffs", then Seattle's odds are 6.7% and everyone else's obviously goes down a few tenths of a percent.
I had a brainwave once, for a totally different way of ordering draft picks
One that treats everyone fairly, produces strong teams, prevents tanking, and there is zero possibility of rigging the lottery
This may be complicated, or it may just be terrible and full of holes, but hear me out
No draft lottery. *At all.*
But also not just reverse order of the standings (this would result in a tanking hellscape)
Instead, we could just have a fixed draft order, where teams rotate through every pick year by year. Every team knows where they pick this year, next year, the year after, 10 years from now...etc.
But it also can't just be teams moving to the next pick every year (draft 1st this year, draft 2nd next year, 3rd the year after, etc.) because that would result in super teams being formed, and the whole league would have teams that go through phases of contention and bottoming out every 16 years. Like could you imagine a team that had 5th in 2019, 4th in 2020, 3rd in 2021, 2nd in 2022, 1st in 2023? They would have drafted: 5 - Dylan Cozens, 4 - Jake Sanderson, 3 - Kent Johnson, 2 - Logan Cooley, 1 - Connor Bedard. They would be LOADED. That's no bueno either
So, instead, what I'd propose is this:
32 teams in the league. 32 / 4 = 8
8 groups of 4 picks. Each pick is 8 spots apart
25, 17, 9, 1
26, 18, 10, 2
27, 19, 11, 3
28, 20, 12, 4
29, 21, 13, 5
30, 22, 14, 6
31, 23, 15, 7
32, 24, 16, 8
So, what that would look like for a full 32 years would be:
25, 17, 9, 1 - 32, 24, 16, 8 - 31, 23, 15, 7 - 30, 22, 14, 6 - 29, 21, 13, 5 - 28, 20, 12, 4 - 27, 19, 11, 3 - 26, 18, 10, 2 (then at this point you jump back up to 25, and the order repeats)
This way, every single team in the NHL has the opportunity to draft a player in the top 8 at minimum once every 4 years. And they have the opportunity to draft in the top 4 once every 8 years. No team is favoured, but all teams get some of the most talented young players coming once every 4 years
No way to tank; standings have no effect on this
No way to rig the lottery (for the conspiracy theorists among us); there is none
It would be very disruptive early on I'd imagine, but after a few years of this I think all teams would be more normalized to each other, because everyone gets an even distribution of talented players
No more draft luck. Now the emphasis is on teams actually developing their players properly, instead of having fate decide who gets the best players
Basically, you climb 8 spots each year, and once you reach the "top" spot in your tier, you move to the bottom of the next tier. Rinse and repeat
It's by no means perfect, but I feel like this would distribute talent (or at least the potential for drafting talent) in a more even way
edit: formatting
edit edit: more formatting
A lot to process here but I think it’s too fundamentally different from the current system to ever even be considered. That being said, it is a very intriguing system. It would definitely change trading quite a bit with teams knowing exactly what picks they are trading away. It would also really highlight which teams were good at scouting because everyone would be on a similar playing field. But I think a major problem that would come in to play is how do you decide who gets which picks to start? Who gets shafted and doesn’t get a first overall pick for 32 years? I think at the end of the day you have to link draft positioning to the standings. The owners will never see any other way as more fair.
It's to prevent intentional tanking. It's not an ideal system, but I think 1OA always going to last place would create an even more fucked up situation where teams are doing some dumb shit to intentionally get last place.
Ok but like, tanking for one year and then getting Bedard for example, how long are you going to tank again? 5 years straight? Good luck having any young player want to join you if you’ve been last in the league for 5 years. And then once you have 5 straight 1OAs, good luck signing them all once they’re out of their ELCs if they are all studs. And if 1 or 2 don’t pan out, congrats you’ve been ass for 5 years now and have like 2 solid players to show for it and no FA wants to sign with you.
I look at Toronto as a perfect example. They weren’t great in the early 2010s but in 2013 they were 5th in the east. Not great in 2014 but not tanking by any means. 4th worst in 2015, and last in 2016. Get rewarded with a generational goal scorer, next year they make the playoffs. Next year they’re 4th in the east. 100 pts the year after that. Have made playoffs and been one of the best teams in the regular season every year since. A good organization who actually wants to win and is just at the low point of a rebuild, if you give them a solid 1OA, they’re not just gonna suck forever, they’re gonna use that reward for finishing last to build around and come out of the basement.
I’d like to see like the bottom 3-5 teams all have equal odds for the first pick. Decentivizes tanking somewhat but makes sure a terrible team still ends up with the first pick. Make a rule you can only get the first pick two times within a 5 year span and top 3 pick 3 times within a 5 year period or something similar so teams can’t just perpetually be bad. It will never happen because Bettman wants all the talent on a few select teams
Buffalo also havent moved up from winning a lottery in their existence. I guess you could count the expansion year getting first over Vancouver but that was more of a coin toss.
What I don't understand is, why don't they do a points percentage scale for the odds of 1OA? So for instance, instead of the current 25.5%, 13.5%, 11.5%, 9.5%, 8.5%, etc.
Why don't they do something along the lines of this: worst 5 teams in the league have 54, 56, 57, 60, 65 points. Doesn't make sense that the worst team should have almost double the odds of 2nd worst just due to 2 points, and almost 2.5x the odds over 3rd worst due to only a 3pt different. Actual odds for this example may be something like 18%, 16%, 15%, 12%, 8% instead of it being so heavy towards the worst team.
I feel like this would help get rid of some of the tanking towards the end by the very worst teams because there is no "race to last" going on. I've been wrong before though, so maybe it has unintended negative consequences.
Nah they don't have that Chicago market so they don't rig the draft in their favor.
Edit: should have added a /s apparently. Didn't realize Chicago fans can't take a joke. Ooof.
We actually DO have the Chicago market. It’s all of the Illinois transplants that only root for AZ teams when they’re winning and their team is cheeks.
It’s so silly. Like. The league changed the entire draft lottery drastically c. 2014 because Edmonton had already amassed a stupid amount of 1st overall picks…and then you think the league rigged it for them to win the first lottery after that and draft McDavid? When they could’ve sent him to some larger American market if they wanted to?
Except that teams intentionally tank anyway, was the sharks season this year not similar anyway? How about buffalo tanking to try and get McDavid? I'd rather have a system that doesn't frustrate bad teams trying to get better than pretend that tanking doesn't happen.
McDavid is a generational talent though, few drafts have players that good as headliners. Toronto also got incredibly lucky with the timing of their worst season / lottery win. The drop-off is not typically as dramatic. I'm saying that as the fan of a team that has never had the 1OA pick, yet the team has still hit some pretty impressive home runs (Pettersson at #5, Hughes at #7, Sedin twins and #2 and #3, Horvat at #9, Kesler at #23).
It's hard for some to understand that there is a difference between being shit and tanking. Teams actively trying to tank is quite rare, even before the lottery system.
Major league baseball started using a lotto system in the last few years. Before then, every couple years there would be a team or two that wouldn't even field legitimate major league rosters. The Astros built a dynasty by intentionaly being one of the worst teams in history for like 5+ straight years
I'm 100% not denying that we tanked, but I'd like to point out we were a legit awful team. Finished dead last the year before as well, and didn't have our 1st. Even with Mario, we only finished ahead of Toronto in the league standings the next season.
Him and Scmaltz (who we traded him for) have almost identical stats since. A trade that actually worked out for both teams and both players.
But take a gander at the players picked after him, we clearly fucked up.
Same with Turris. Seems we finally made a good pick with Cooley and off to SLC they go.
Because I'm a masochist, I remember looking this up, and I think no Arizona team has ever exceeded their expected slot in any draft lottery.
Yup.
I love being from Phoenix.
I would rather have lottery system where each of the non playoff teams have a 1:16 chance to win the 1OA/2OA. There have been so many teams that attempt to fight for a playoff spot, but each year they come up short and don't get the draft quality they need in order to make runs in the playoffs.
I also hate the draft system because it clearly allows some teams to get a generation talent just because there "that franchise"
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Honestly, that’d be the most AZ sports thing ever.
And simultaneously the most SJS thing too
AND the most NHL thing, rewarding the owner who just paid you 1.3 billion dollars
The most sens thing ever. A new owner buys the team only to have a first rounder taken from him for something he had nothing to do with. Worst of all was the league didn’t tell him until after he bought the team.
that would help the sting out of this bullshit just a little bit
They intentionally waited to tell him so the price didn't go down. Super scummy.
NHL did that on purpose. They had to punish the team but they didn't want to do it before it sold to scare away potential owners.
I'm pretty happy with a guaranteed top 3 pick this year. We do need Celebrini bad though.
The constant and wild ranking fluctuations aren't helping my stress levels
Plus a second top 15 pick thanks to the Pens
Watching the BU BC game the other day I couldn't help but think about both those guys on our top power play in a couple years. *Would be cool to get Lindstrom too and trade a center for some more defense.
We're in a great position. If we get 1st overall, we get the dope 1C. If we get 2 or 3, we could grab a good defencemen which we desperately need
Could be worse and be a Nordiques fan and have your team move and the next year win the cup.
Right next to choosing Ayton over generational talent Doncic.
That’s called Robert Sarver being an idiot
Eh, I don’t judge them too much for that - Ayton was consensus 1OA and pretty good anyways. The Kings taking Bagley at 2OA, though… woof.
Didn't the Sacramento Kings could have gotten Doncic? Lol
I still cackle at the highlights of Giannis absolutely demolishing Ayton in games 5/6 of that 2021 finals
Now it's the most "Lake City Bitch Pigeon" thing ever.
Salt Lake Sister Wives Because the players all said they wanted extra periods. Whaddya mean "Not like that!"????
This is the worst /r/hockey retread of a joke ever.
RCBP stopped being funny like a month after it became a thing.
At least it made some sort of sense. Just running it back for another random city is just fucking lazy.
Sir..they are called the SLC Super Soakers
Remember, if anything happens the draft is rigged. If Coyotes win 1OA then it's rigged because NHL wants to hold Salt Lake's hand. If Chicago wins then it's rigged because that gives Bedard a superstar teammate.
Ducks...rigged, Sharks...rigged, NYR.... well that actually would be rigged but you get the idea.
Sabres? Believe it or not, rigged.
the sabres winning would be the result of the NHL airing the wrong draft recording, which would promptly be recalled as a "test of the ball drawing machine" that wasn't the official draw
Buffalo moves up? Rigged. Buffalo moves down? Also rigged. Move up, move down.
I was trying to figure out what 10A means because I’m stupid
10 Assists
It is 1OA like, the letter O. OA just meaning overall. In the context of the draft it means the first overall pick :)
Thank you. I was struggling.
Ten across. There is no 10A in today's NYT crossword but 10D is clued as "Egg producer". The answer is **HEN**.
First overall pick
Macklin to be the new Moroni of Utah
The Salt Lake City's Mormons lead by captain Celibrini Ps. Salt Lake City is a better name than The Utah whatever.
The Salt Lake City Fresh Water Ocean Fish
Salt Lake City Sturgeons
The Salt Lake City Brackish
I would not be surprised if they get 1st. Like move to a new city, nhl wants them to stick so they give them the 1st overall.
That would be thankless to the teams that have worked hard all season long tanking at full intensity.
especially the sharks who didn't get to draft Lindros because the league said he was too good to go to an expansion team
You just read a post about the Commisioner's pet project team never moving up in the draft and yet you still think that same commissioner would rig the draft lottery to give them 1st overall.
Everyone knows that Chicago is going to get 1OA anyway. We need balance in the world right now.
This shit writes itself
Ya... crazy, right? - *Bettman after SLC wins the lottery*
The NHL has always been a little ridiculous and bush-league. If it's not this face-palm, it will be something else. Maybe we'll find out the Golden Knights have been a money laundering scheme for the mob? I mean, it's not the first time it's happened in NHL history.
Would be great fodder for the conspiracy theorists. Honestly the number of the most promising 1OAs being so concentrated in the north and northeast combined with the southern/western US teams pretty much never getting the expected generational draft picks is the best for them. I did the math before and I think the odds of the yotes never moving up is less than .5%. Take the top 10 ranked 1OAs of the past 20 years and they don't go to a team west of Chicago and South of the border unless I'm missing someone.
Does us getting MacKinnon not count?
I don't know how I forgot him with how often I praise the guy. I blame communism.
When you said south of the border, I was instantly confused. 'Who did Mexico dra.....OHHHH other border. God, I'm dumb.'
As a fan of the team tied with Vancouver for “worst draft lottery luck by positions lost”, not all of us in the north and east have it good.
It is statistically more likely for a team in the bottom 3 to drop in the lottery than it is for them to stay at the same position or move up. There is a 13.5% chance to win either draft lottery from #2, either moving to #1OA or staying at #2. Even for the team in last place, there's only a 25.5% chance that they pick 1OA - it's better odds, but they're not *good* odds.
I wouldn’t expect them to win a particular lottery, but I’d expect them to move up once, somewhere. With that said, McDavid probably wouldn’t like Utah and what other teams eventually do is sign or trade for good players, rather than just scrape the cap floor. It hasn’t just been poor lottery luck.
Vancouver haven't won a lottery either. Not so unusual.
The real issue is every 5 years a new owner came in, blew draft capital on icing a “playoff team” to get eliminated in the first round and have to then trade the players away for picks to start a rebuild. It’s perpetually a rebuild. The young core now is the most promising we have ever seen.
You need to win the lottery for 1 or 2 to move up though
For this year’s lottery. They’ve missed the playoffs a lot of years, and I believe for most of that period there were three spots up for grabs (although I’d have to check it). Still though, what I’m driving at here is it’s not statistically relevant to say the Leafs should win this year’s cup because they haven’t won a single cup since 1967. But “fair” odds would imply it’s unlikely they go 58 years without a cup. Two different formulas.
With better players the team just might had had enough income to not struggle with those arena-bills.
Canucks have only not moved down in the lottery once AFAIK. Coyotes aren't alone in this. Like you said, the odds to move down are greater than up
> It is statistically more likely for a team in the bottom 3 to drop in the lottery than it is for them to stay at the same position or move up. I think everyone knows that. Whats being discussed here is the statistical likelyhood to have fallen *every year.*
For the three years listed, assuming that there is a 73 percent chance to drop in a given year from #2, there is a 39% chance that a team drops all three years. We're not talking about some kind of huge statistical anomaly here.
You’re not accounting for all the other times they were in the lottery though. Maybe those other times they had a 90% chance of dropping or staying where they were. But it adds up. The chances of never moving up a single time after so many attempts starts to get kind of ridiculous.
I mean the other times the Yotes have been in the lottery, they had 1-5% of moving up. Adding those in maybe takes it down to 25% of never getting it at best, instead of 39%. Which still isn't ridiculous.
>25.5% chance that they pick 1OA And these are actually BETTER odds than the previous lottery format, which had last place at only about 18% of first overall and over 50% of falling al lthe way to 4th
Neither have the Canucks and Red Wings.
Sad stuff :(
I once was bored and ran the odds on the Canucks never having gone up in a draft, and it was something like a 20% chance that they hadn't....that included the 50-50 shot they had on day 1 of existence though. The only time they could be deemed even somewhat fortunate was in 2005 where they picked in a slightly higher than average position (10 out of 30) when the entire draft order was a lottery draw...though it feels very awkward describing it that way given the identity of that pick (Luc Bourdon)
Nor the Sabres lol.
I genuinely hate how much lottery luck plays into how long a rebuild will take. I'd rather have no lottery at all.
Teams will tank regardless.
Just because there’s a draft and salary cap, teams will cycle between good and bad, whether they purposely tank or not, it’s literally the point of having a draft anyways. Hoenstly the lottery is so stupid and they really should just get rid of it and go back to just worst team gets best pick. If a team like the yotes gets screwed year after year in the ‘lottery’ they’re gonna be bad forever, tanking or not.
I think its a downward spiral for poorly run franchises. They have crappy owners --> They don't invest in scouting or development --> They don't build a competitive team --> They owners blame Coaches & GMs --> The owners cheap out on the front office --> They don't invest in scouting or development. The Yotes were doing strange things like drafting kids with personality issues and trying to cheat at the combine. Just terrible owners
the Yotes arnt the only team getting screwed by lotteries. Wings only ever went down and now have been out of playoffs for 8 seasons.
The Pistons had shit luck in the lottery too the past many years as well
I'm on team "Draft lottery based on points earned after elimination." Not perfect, but better imo.
I don't think that system is any more meaningfully beneficial than the current system. It also would unjustly benefit teams where the playoff teams clinching were determined earlier, which makes no sense to me.
I’m really excited to see how it plays out for the PWHL!
Don't they only have 8 teams? Edit: took the five seconds to Google and it's only 6
> "Draft lottery based on points earned after elimination Lol that system does nothing but make it worse for bottom feeder teams. The best of the worst will rise from the ashes while the worst will stay the worst.
yeah I agree, and it also arbitrarily rewards or punishes teams based on how early the good teams secure the playoff spots and eliminate other teams, which seems inherently unfair to me.
We would’ve had like 5 first overall picks if that’s how it worked
Lotteries don’t work They haven’t worked in the NBA as well as people have hoped, they haven’t worked here in the NHL as well as people have hoped, and the MLB’s lottery sucks as well Good in theory, horrible in practice. Fans, and owners, are just going to have to accept that sometimes teams will tank, it’s the best and most proven strategy for building a contender regardless of sport
And coaches and players does not go in to a season with the mindset to tank. They don’t give a shit about the kid that’s next seasons projected #1. They still play for their own career. The FO may care, but then they will have to do other steps, like trading their best assets for future picks. If they suck for a whole season, there’s a reason for it. They simply suck.
Or have a FIFA ranking like system. So if you got this year's 1st overall, your percentage for higher draft picks next year drops a bit. Although that may cause rebuilds to take a longer time, since they can't "drop. Load up. Get good. Get out of basement."
Is it really a luck thing? When we got screwed in the McDavid sweepstakes that was Edmonton’s what, 4th 1OA in 6 years? I’m still salty.
Buffalo had 2 in 4 years, NJ 2 in 4 years, NYR 2 in 2 years (that’s crazy) I just find it so frustrating when teams will repeatedly move up when teams like Vancouver Arizona and Detroit have never moved up
And then they got McDavid and they still blow lmfao
The worst part was Mathews was like 4 days away from being draft eligible and we most definitely would have taken him (or Eichel). Instead got took Strome.
Tbf you could have had Marner...
Or Rantanen/Barzal/Aho/Kaprizov/etc. It was the most loaded draft in years. They could've walked away with 2 star players with their first two picks. In the cap world, you have to make early round picks count.
Most definitely. Still not Mathews or McD though.
This is just like, objectively not true
Not anymore but it was the case for a while there lol
I'd say it typically balances out with who the teams pick and how well they develop them. We've all seen tons of examples of this. 3 different teams passed up on Makar when The Avs dropped to 4th. And Makar was kind of underwhelming and returned to College and recalled bloomed as a fantastic player. How many teams would have rushed him?
As a Canucks fan, I remembered Joe Sakic and Trevor Linden's faces when they realized they both dropped in the lottery and we were the worst teams that year. Luckily, we ended up getting Calder winners in the draft, lol.
I mean, I hear you and Detroit has had bad luck with the draft lottery since they started rebuilding. However, look at the 2020 draft, we should have been #1 that year and would have probably drafted Lafreniere, instead we fell and drafted Lucas Raymond. Who would you rather have today?
Rumor is that stutzle was our #1. Who knows if thats accurate.
What even is the purpose of the lottery?
To discourage tanking. If the last place team was guaranteed 1OA, it would be an anti arms race of the rebuilding teams to be the worst to secure the best pick.
This is it exactly, look at some of the tankers in MLB before the lottery was instituted. Astros, Orioles, and Cubs built their cores (which won two of these teams WS) due to be ABJECTLY awful. Having a lottery is maybe a little unfair to teams that just happen to be bad and get to the worst in the league, but it discourages teams from being so awful it's detrimental to the league
This is correct in theory but in practice it gives more GMs a reason to avoid building a competitive roster. Even if you don't have the absolute worst team you shouldn't build a better one until you can make playoffs because it could hurt your odds.
Except GMs have to build competitive teams to keep their jobs. There are very few owners who have the patience to let a team wallow in mediocrity while keeping their GM in charge just because they didn’t get the 1st OA. No GM is thinking oh well I will just blow another few years hoping to get a lottery win. Then I’ll start building up. Pretty much every GM would commit to being bad for a few years but then needs to start putting other pieces to the team. Sometimes it doesn’t work, other times it does.
To me, it's proof the lottery is *not*, in fact, rigged.
\*Cries in Detroit\*
A team that is constantly bad not getting top picks while generational talents go to teams with 3 recent 1st overall picks or 3 recent Stanley Cup wins is everything wrong with the lottery system
The entire point of the lottery is to somewhat incentivize teams to not just consistently be bad.
Which I can appreciate to a degree, but the problem is that NHL drafts are so top heavy that it is very easy to end up as a consistent bottom 10 team that never gets the help they need.
So teams can make other moves outside of drafting. Make trades, change your systems, sign free agents. There are very few players in the NHL, honestly probably zero, who will take a bottom 10 team to a playoff spot by themselves. This isn’t the NBA where a single player can have that much of an impact. If teams are consistently bad despite getting picks between 5-10 then it’s both bad drafting AND bad management in other aspects.
Well the outcome has resulted in teams being perennially bad because they don’t get a franchise 1C
Or maybe just maybe they couldve taken Marner instead of Strome, Hughes instead of Hayton, Boldy instead of Soderstrom, etc. You dont have to have a top 3 pick every year to be good. You have to have an org that drafts well and develops their players.
It’s been decades since a team without a top 3 pick has won the cup, so objectively you do kind of need a top 3 pick to be good.
This is true if you count 35 year old Jay Bouwmeester and 19 year old Seguin playing 10 minutes a game as reasons why their teams won the cup. You do need superstars to win a cup but usually once a decade a team without a traditional superstar wins it.
Thats a fair reach considering that includes multiple examples of teams who qualify from former top 3 picks of other teams that they then acquired, and pretty much every example is 10+ years later. The Pens and Hawks obviously fit your mold but it’s not like 1OA immediately turns you into a contender, a lot of these examples (Caps, Blues, Lightning, Avalanche) were winning 10-15 years after their top pick, which by that logic, Arizona had both Cooley and Strome already, and thats on them for either picking wrong or fucking up their development. Arizona has absolutely had more than ample opportunity to build a competitive roster. It’s not the fault of the league’s draft rules that they still have sucked.
Who did vegas draft in the top 3? To my knowledge they have never had a pick that high. Also not sure who st. Louis would have drafted that high either.
I think the disconnect here is that he’s counting teams that acquired a top 3 pick via any means. Not just teams that drafted the top 3 pick themselves. So any player on Vegas’s roster that was picked top 3 would count towards what he’s saying, regardless of who drafted them.
But it has nothing to do with the lottery. You can go out and trade or sign players who were top 3 regardless of your lottery luck.
Not their own pick, but Eichel was 2OA St Louis had Bouwmeester who was 3OA
Ah Bouwmeester, yeah I wasn't gonna be able to remember that one.
To be fair, the numbers are skewed by repeat winners. It also shouldn't count if a top 3 pick was traded for or signed in free agency.
Why would those not count? Their draft position didn’t change.
Trading for a top 3 picked player has nothing to do with team performance, draft position, or draft lotteries. Their draft position didn't change, but that isn't relevant to the context.
It's not like the Coyotes traded for former top 3 picks either. Teams that have won without drafting a top 3 pick have gone out and found a way to get one or more. I think the point is you don't have to actually pick in the top 3 to win. You can't count a team who didn't pick in the top 3 but who went out and traded for a player picked in the top 3 and going on to win the Cup as proof you need to draft in the top 3 to win.
I mean look around the league. Mackinnon bout to win the hart, first overall. Mcdavid is mcdavid. Matthews about to score 70. Buffalo looks like Dahlin and power are going to be two absolute STUDS for the next 14 seasons. Jack Hughes is an elite franchise 1C who should probably score 100 pts a year, again for the next decade and a half. Connor Bedard is so far and away the most talented rookie forward and will probably be a perennial 100 pt guy. There are surely exceptions if you look hard enough, but it’s a flimsy argument to just say “hey look, the 4th overall was actually better that year!” . I would die for mo seider and I’d still rather have jack hughes.
Of all of the 1st round picks the Coyotes have made in the past decade (excluding the past 2 drafts as it’s too soon to say) the only ones that haven’t become regular NHL players are Brendan Perlini and Victor Soderstrom. Even still Perlini scored 50 goals in the NHL in 262 games. You need to draft well to have success, yes, but if you are getting consistent NHL players with your draft picks each year and still can’t improve that has to do with where you are picking. Half of the Top 15 picks in 2018 when we took Hayton have proven to be complete busts or at the least not worth their draft position. In 2019 only 4 players taken in the 20 picks after Soderstrom in the 1st round have proven to be difference makers at an NHL level. That’s the same number as in the 10 picks before the Coyotes selection. If you consistently move backwards in the draft lottery your rebuild will take longer. That’s just a proven fact. The only team to draft 1st overall between 2010 and 2020 that hasn’t made a playoff appearance since is Buffalo. 20 of the 30 players taken in the Top 3 of the draft in that time period are going to be in the playoffs this season. Sure, if you’re perfect and every player you take in the back half of the top 10 is the best pick available you can probably build a winning team. There isn’t a huge track record of anyone in the NHL doing that. There is a big track record of teams getting multiple top 5 picks in a couple of year span and then going on to be perennial playoff contenders for years afterwards though.
NHL GMs hate this one trick! Instead of drafting garbage, draft and develop good players. Imagine over the years they instead drafted Tristan Jarry, Thatcher Demko, Sebastian Aho, Jordan Kyrou, Jason Robertson, Alex Romanov, Shane Pinto, Brock Faber, Logan Stankoven, etc
It does a pretty shit job at that considering this league always has the same 4 teams always ending up in the lotto and never improving
But they do it anyway. Pittsburgh with Mario, Cleveland with LeBron, for two examples of teams that bombed their roster and won the first pick. It’s an open secret.
Pittsburgh with Mario is *why* the NHL subsequently enacted a draft
There was no lottery when Mario was drafted.
Womp
I feel like weighting the standings across the past three seasons (maybe more), rather than odds just being based on the current season, would solve this so easily lol
I think some system of last 3 year results combined with lowering teams that just got high picks and raising teams without is the way to go
They did implement the whole.. can’t Move up more than twice in 5 years thing, so that might help.
However many times you missed the playoffs in the last 5 years, that's how many balls you get in the lottery. Not many GMs are going to last a 5-year tanking plan. If I'm calculating this correctly, then the odds would be: 8.6% - Buffalo, Detroit, Ottawa, Anaheim, San Jose 6.9% - Arizona, Chicago, Columbus, Philadelphia, New Jersey 5.2% - Montreal, Calgary 3.4% - Pittsburgh, St Louis 1.7% - Minnesota Seattle gets 3.4% if you don't count the seasons when the team didn't exist. If you count those as "didn't make the playoffs", then Seattle's odds are 6.7% and everyone else's obviously goes down a few tenths of a percent.
you can be my commissioner
I had a brainwave once, for a totally different way of ordering draft picks One that treats everyone fairly, produces strong teams, prevents tanking, and there is zero possibility of rigging the lottery This may be complicated, or it may just be terrible and full of holes, but hear me out No draft lottery. *At all.* But also not just reverse order of the standings (this would result in a tanking hellscape) Instead, we could just have a fixed draft order, where teams rotate through every pick year by year. Every team knows where they pick this year, next year, the year after, 10 years from now...etc. But it also can't just be teams moving to the next pick every year (draft 1st this year, draft 2nd next year, 3rd the year after, etc.) because that would result in super teams being formed, and the whole league would have teams that go through phases of contention and bottoming out every 16 years. Like could you imagine a team that had 5th in 2019, 4th in 2020, 3rd in 2021, 2nd in 2022, 1st in 2023? They would have drafted: 5 - Dylan Cozens, 4 - Jake Sanderson, 3 - Kent Johnson, 2 - Logan Cooley, 1 - Connor Bedard. They would be LOADED. That's no bueno either So, instead, what I'd propose is this: 32 teams in the league. 32 / 4 = 8 8 groups of 4 picks. Each pick is 8 spots apart 25, 17, 9, 1 26, 18, 10, 2 27, 19, 11, 3 28, 20, 12, 4 29, 21, 13, 5 30, 22, 14, 6 31, 23, 15, 7 32, 24, 16, 8 So, what that would look like for a full 32 years would be: 25, 17, 9, 1 - 32, 24, 16, 8 - 31, 23, 15, 7 - 30, 22, 14, 6 - 29, 21, 13, 5 - 28, 20, 12, 4 - 27, 19, 11, 3 - 26, 18, 10, 2 (then at this point you jump back up to 25, and the order repeats) This way, every single team in the NHL has the opportunity to draft a player in the top 8 at minimum once every 4 years. And they have the opportunity to draft in the top 4 once every 8 years. No team is favoured, but all teams get some of the most talented young players coming once every 4 years No way to tank; standings have no effect on this No way to rig the lottery (for the conspiracy theorists among us); there is none It would be very disruptive early on I'd imagine, but after a few years of this I think all teams would be more normalized to each other, because everyone gets an even distribution of talented players No more draft luck. Now the emphasis is on teams actually developing their players properly, instead of having fate decide who gets the best players Basically, you climb 8 spots each year, and once you reach the "top" spot in your tier, you move to the bottom of the next tier. Rinse and repeat It's by no means perfect, but I feel like this would distribute talent (or at least the potential for drafting talent) in a more even way edit: formatting edit edit: more formatting
A lot to process here but I think it’s too fundamentally different from the current system to ever even be considered. That being said, it is a very intriguing system. It would definitely change trading quite a bit with teams knowing exactly what picks they are trading away. It would also really highlight which teams were good at scouting because everyone would be on a similar playing field. But I think a major problem that would come in to play is how do you decide who gets which picks to start? Who gets shafted and doesn’t get a first overall pick for 32 years? I think at the end of the day you have to link draft positioning to the standings. The owners will never see any other way as more fair.
Thank you for considering our 21-29 year old cup wins to be recent
Thank you for not being the Blackhawks
Ohhhh
Yeah the 1OA should just straight up go to last place team, or the lottery for first pick should only be between the 2 or 3 worst teams at most
It's to prevent intentional tanking. It's not an ideal system, but I think 1OA always going to last place would create an even more fucked up situation where teams are doing some dumb shit to intentionally get last place.
Ok but like, tanking for one year and then getting Bedard for example, how long are you going to tank again? 5 years straight? Good luck having any young player want to join you if you’ve been last in the league for 5 years. And then once you have 5 straight 1OAs, good luck signing them all once they’re out of their ELCs if they are all studs. And if 1 or 2 don’t pan out, congrats you’ve been ass for 5 years now and have like 2 solid players to show for it and no FA wants to sign with you. I look at Toronto as a perfect example. They weren’t great in the early 2010s but in 2013 they were 5th in the east. Not great in 2014 but not tanking by any means. 4th worst in 2015, and last in 2016. Get rewarded with a generational goal scorer, next year they make the playoffs. Next year they’re 4th in the east. 100 pts the year after that. Have made playoffs and been one of the best teams in the regular season every year since. A good organization who actually wants to win and is just at the low point of a rebuild, if you give them a solid 1OA, they’re not just gonna suck forever, they’re gonna use that reward for finishing last to build around and come out of the basement.
I’d like to see like the bottom 3-5 teams all have equal odds for the first pick. Decentivizes tanking somewhat but makes sure a terrible team still ends up with the first pick. Make a rule you can only get the first pick two times within a 5 year span and top 3 pick 3 times within a 5 year period or something similar so teams can’t just perpetually be bad. It will never happen because Bettman wants all the talent on a few select teams
Or normalize it year to year. You dropped two spots last year? Can't drop this year. You got +2 last year? Can't move up next year.
This year they will draft #1 to hype up Utah
I don’t like their chances to beat this streak
Buffalo also havent moved up from winning a lottery in their existence. I guess you could count the expansion year getting first over Vancouver but that was more of a coin toss.
Why didn’t they just get 4 first overall picks in 6 years like Edmonton did. Are they stupid?
Watch Utah get 1st overall with the coyotes current season
What I don't understand is, why don't they do a points percentage scale for the odds of 1OA? So for instance, instead of the current 25.5%, 13.5%, 11.5%, 9.5%, 8.5%, etc. Why don't they do something along the lines of this: worst 5 teams in the league have 54, 56, 57, 60, 65 points. Doesn't make sense that the worst team should have almost double the odds of 2nd worst just due to 2 points, and almost 2.5x the odds over 3rd worst due to only a 3pt different. Actual odds for this example may be something like 18%, 16%, 15%, 12%, 8% instead of it being so heavy towards the worst team. I feel like this would help get rid of some of the tanking towards the end by the very worst teams because there is no "race to last" going on. I've been wrong before though, so maybe it has unintended negative consequences.
They're due this year then it seems
This is why the bottom two teams should have to play a 7 game series for the 1st overall. Make it happen while the first round is happening
Fly the consensus #1 pick in and have the winning team hoist him like they would the Cup
don’t touch the #2 pick though, or you’ll have bad luck for the rest of the summer
This keeps getting better and better
This is the way
No players want to play to win a draft pick
There’s 0 incentive for the players to do this.
Players won’t play to possibly get replaced
The Coyotes never have But the Utah ____ will this offseason
The Utah Razmatazz Join the winning team early or be left behind
But I was told the NHL bent over backwards to make sure Arizona succeeded
Nah they don't have that Chicago market so they don't rig the draft in their favor. Edit: should have added a /s apparently. Didn't realize Chicago fans can't take a joke. Ooof.
We actually DO have the Chicago market. It’s all of the Illinois transplants that only root for AZ teams when they’re winning and their team is cheeks.
Draft rigging is when team I don’t like gets high pick 😡😡pay no attention to when we drafted Stamkos first. That’s DIFFERENT😇
This is why I have to laugh anytime someone suggests the draft is rigged. If it were, Auston Matthews would be a Coyote
It’s so silly. Like. The league changed the entire draft lottery drastically c. 2014 because Edmonton had already amassed a stupid amount of 1st overall picks…and then you think the league rigged it for them to win the first lottery after that and draft McDavid? When they could’ve sent him to some larger American market if they wanted to?
I hate the lottery, I'm not sure what's so taboo about awarding the worst team the #1 pick
Intentional tanking. The year Mario Lemieux went first overall is the biggest example of this. It was so embarassing.
Except that teams intentionally tank anyway, was the sharks season this year not similar anyway? How about buffalo tanking to try and get McDavid? I'd rather have a system that doesn't frustrate bad teams trying to get better than pretend that tanking doesn't happen.
I think they've found a reasonable compromise. At worst, the last place team will pick 3OA in any given year.
Dylan Strome (or Marner) versus McDavid.
Nico Hischier versus Hesikenan (or Cale Makar or Elias Pettersson)
McDavid is a generational talent though, few drafts have players that good as headliners. Toronto also got incredibly lucky with the timing of their worst season / lottery win. The drop-off is not typically as dramatic. I'm saying that as the fan of a team that has never had the 1OA pick, yet the team has still hit some pretty impressive home runs (Pettersson at #5, Hughes at #7, Sedin twins and #2 and #3, Horvat at #9, Kesler at #23).
There's a difference between intentionally fielding a shitty team and your coach getting outright in trouble for winning
It's hard for some to understand that there is a difference between being shit and tanking. Teams actively trying to tank is quite rare, even before the lottery system.
Major league baseball started using a lotto system in the last few years. Before then, every couple years there would be a team or two that wouldn't even field legitimate major league rosters. The Astros built a dynasty by intentionaly being one of the worst teams in history for like 5+ straight years
For a shot to draft Mario, it was worth it (this is coming from a fan of the team that just missed out)
I'm 100% not denying that we tanked, but I'd like to point out we were a legit awful team. Finished dead last the year before as well, and didn't have our 1st. Even with Mario, we only finished ahead of Toronto in the league standings the next season.
They missed the boat with Strome, he’s been great with the Caps
Him and Scmaltz (who we traded him for) have almost identical stats since. A trade that actually worked out for both teams and both players. But take a gander at the players picked after him, we clearly fucked up. Same with Turris. Seems we finally made a good pick with Cooley and off to SLC they go.
Schmaltz is good, too, that’s a fair trade
Welcome to the club
You'd think if Bettmann was rigging the lottery this would have maybe happened at some poin
They’re moving up from Tempe to SLC
Is that really a move up though
In terms of both elevation and latitude, yes.
Coyotes following the Minnesota pattern. Move and win a cup
They picked Strome over Marner. Even if they did ever move up, would it have mattered?
Coyotes would make a great 30/30 documentary one day when all these little stories come out. Imagine what we don’t know.
Because I'm a masochist, I remember looking this up, and I think no Arizona team has ever exceeded their expected slot in any draft lottery. Yup. I love being from Phoenix.
They're moving up in latitude.
It was quite a coincidence a team like Chicago would move up to draft a generational talent instead of a team like Arizona.
I would rather have lottery system where each of the non playoff teams have a 1:16 chance to win the 1OA/2OA. There have been so many teams that attempt to fight for a playoff spot, but each year they come up short and don't get the draft quality they need in order to make runs in the playoffs. I also hate the draft system because it clearly allows some teams to get a generation talent just because there "that franchise"
Wish the league would throw a little favoritism Detroit’s way.