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Brian Burke on How He?d Change NHL Draft Lottery System


Phil

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Perhaps he?s still salty about having to settle for Bobby Ryan instead of Sidney Crosby in 2005, but Brian Burke, like many hockey fans, isn?t fully satisfied with the current system the NHL has in place to determine the order of its annual draft.

 

Burke said during his To The Point segment this past weekend on Hockey Night in Canada that if it were up to him he?d make certain tweaks. The former NHL exec doubled down during a Wednesday appearance on The Starting Lineup, saying there are two main things he?d change about the draft lottery.

 

The first is the number of teams involved.

 

?The teams that need the most help, get the most help. That?s the theory of inverse order of finish,? Burke said. ?Now you?ve got teams that openly talk about tanking, teams that clearly tanked, so we have to put in a lottery. I agree. I get it. But we?ve got all the non-playoff teams in the lottery and I think that?s a joke.?

 

?I think it should be five teams in the lottery,? Burke said as his first proposed tweak.

 

Simplifying the process and limiting it to five teams would eliminate a scenario like two years ago when the Flyers won the second lottery, moved up 11 spots to No. 2 and selected Nolan Patrick. Or like last year when Carolina moved up nine spots affording them the opportunity to draft Russian standout Andrei Svechnikov.

 

?The second tweak is we shouldn?t reward sustained failure,? Burke added. ?So if you pick No. 1 overall you cannot pick No. 1 overall for three years. The best you can pick is four, you cannot pick in the top three, and if you pick twice in the top three you are relegated to no better than fourth for the next three years.?

 

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/brian-burke-hed-change-nhl-draft-lottery-system/

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I like this one. 16 non playoff team tournament. One game per round. Win or go home. Winner gets the number one pick.

 

Sent from my [device_name] using http://Blueshirts Brotherhood mobile app powered by Tapatalk

New way to tank?

You’d have Carolina and buffalo going hard for that second season

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I like this one. 16 non playoff team tournament. One game per round. Win or go home. Winner gets the number one pick.

 

Sent from my [device_name] using http://Blueshirts Brotherhood mobile app powered by Tapatalk

 

Would certainly change the deadline approach for some teams. They might try adding a piece or 2 just for the draft round robin.

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I like this one. 16 non playoff team tournament. One game per round. Win or go home. Winner gets the number one pick.

 

Sent from my [device_name] using http://Blueshirts Brotherhood mobile app powered by Tapatalk

 

That would be really fun, but in the long run the worst teams will get even more fucked over. No way Ottawa wins a 16 team tournament, so it's rough to have aprox 0% chance of getting 1OA even when finishing last.

 

Would be a problem with picks too. Ottawa wouldn't give a single fuck about that tournament knowing they don't get the pick anyway.

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How about cutting down how far you can move up in the draft. moving from the 11th or the 9th pick to the 2nd should be impossible. I would put the lottery into tiers that can overlap. So for instance, maybe only the bottom 5 can move into the #1 pick but 5-10 can still move into 4th and 11-15 can still move into 7th or something like that. I'm just spitballing though and am not sure how that would work.

 

I think three years of not picking first after getting the first is a little extreme though. Maybe just 1 year.

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Would certainly change the deadline approach for some teams. They might try adding a piece or 2 just for the draft round robin.

 

On the flip side though, who would be ready to unload some of the pending UFA's if it might screw you in the end?

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That would be really fun, but in the long run the worst teams will get even more fucked over. No way Ottawa wins a 16 team tournament, so it's rough to have aprox 0% chance of getting 1OA even when finishing last.

 

Would be a problem with picks too. Ottawa wouldn't give a single fuck about that tournament knowing they don't get the pick anyway.

 

The worst team, if eliminated in the first round, would still pick #9. Win one game and you pick at least #5.

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I saw a tweet today about a suggestion that Shane Doan had which apparently was mentioned by a columnist a couple of years ago....Once a team is eliminated from playoff contention the team that acquires the most points would receive the #1 pick. So the earlier you get eliminated you have more points to accrue until the end of the season.
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I saw a tweet today about a suggestion that Shane Doan had which apparently was mentioned by a columnist a couple of years ago....Once a team is eliminated from playoff contention the team that acquires the most points would receive the #1 pick. So the earlier you get eliminated you have more points to accrue until the end of the season.

 

That doesn't make sense. In a shitty West, a crap team can get eliminated on the last day and have 0 accrued points.

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I think in theory, the NHL has it right.

 

In practice it's not quite as successful because you have these dead teams that serve as a slaughterhouse for the most talented picks.

 

Not letting Edmonton draft 1st overall again is more for league preservation than anything else. Nobody knows who Connor McDavid is and that's a shame. But until the league is ready to throw their hands up and say "fuck it", they'll continue to help the worst teams as best they can.

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I saw a tweet today about a suggestion that Shane Doan had which apparently was mentioned by a columnist a couple of years ago....Once a team is eliminated from playoff contention the team that acquires the most points would receive the #1 pick. So the earlier you get eliminated you have more points to accrue until the end of the season.

 

Now that is an intriguing idea.

 

That doesn't make sense. In a shitty West, a crap team can get eliminated on the last day and have 0 accrued points.

 

Well, if they are in contention for a playoff spot until the last day then they don't deserve to get a very high pick. If the West is that much shittier than the East, then the team you describe doesn't need as much help as another team in the East to close the gap.

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That would be really fun, but in the long run the worst teams will get even more fucked over. No way Ottawa wins a 16 team tournament, so it's rough to have aprox 0% chance of getting 1OA even when finishing last.

 

Would be a problem with picks too. Ottawa wouldn't give a single fuck about that tournament knowing they don't get the pick anyway.

 

Colorado is making a push for the playoffs... and have Ottawa's pick.

https://www.tsn.ca/who-will-win-the-jackpot-2019-draft-lottery-odds-1.1045366

 

Pretty good for the Avalanche

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Relegation/promotion is the best way in sports to avoid tanking. Since you can't relegate big markets... if you finish more than 10 points out of the final playoff spot, you have an equal chance in the draft lottery (right now 6 teams, so 100/6)... so each team would get about 16 balls. First ball out, first pick; second ball out, second pick. BUT if you are in the draft lottery, instead of starting next season with 0 points, you start next season with -5 points. A team could opt out of the draft lottery and start the next season with zero points. After draft lottery done, picks assigned by regular season point total (least to most). Post-season results don't impact pick order.
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Colorado is making a push for the playoffs... and have Ottawa's pick.

https://www.tsn.ca/who-will-win-the-jackpot-2019-draft-lottery-odds-1.1045366

 

Pretty good for the Avalanche

 

Yeah, it was an answer to the idea of having a "torunament" with the lottery teams, to decide who would get the top picks. That would fuck things up with the picks, because Ottawa (in this instance) wouldn't care about that tournament since the pick is not theirs.

 

Sounds weird to "punish" the bad teams with 5 points each year. No team will opt out of the draft lottery for just 5 points, so a lot of teams would start every season with -5.

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Yeah, it was an answer to the idea of having a "torunament" with the lottery teams, to decide who would get the top picks. That would fuck things up with the picks, because Ottawa (in this instance) wouldn't care about that tournament since the pick is not theirs.

 

Sounds weird to "punish" the bad teams with 5 points each year. No team will opt out of the draft lottery for just 5 points, so a lot of teams would start every season with -5.

 

Only the teams eligible for the lottery (5-10 teams) would have negative points (more than -5?) if they chose to participate... I realized each lottery team would only need one ball to determine order of picks. GM would have to tell fan base that a high draft pick (opportunity for top five pick) was worth starting next season behind in the standings. You probably would have to say a team can't participate in lottery more than 2 years in a row or more than 3 times in 5 years.

 

The rationale is that awful teams need the most help with a potential superstar, but the incentive to tank can't be so high that a bad team can rack up 3-4 potential superstars. By giving around 5-8 bad teams (greater than 10 points out of the playoffs) an equal opportunity for lottery picks, there is no incentive to finish dead last vs second to last. So hopefully a lottery team would take some pride and try and beat a borderline playoff team and keep them out of the playoffs, and not be penalized by picking up 2 points and hurting their draft position.

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Yeah, it was an answer to the idea of having a "torunament" with the lottery teams, to decide who would get the top picks. That would fuck things up with the picks, because Ottawa (in this instance) wouldn't care about that tournament since the pick is not theirs.

 

Sounds weird to "punish" the bad teams with 5 points each year. No team will opt out of the draft lottery for just 5 points, so a lot of teams would start every season with -5.

 

Why would anything be messed up? Even if Ottawa forfeited Colorado gets the 9th pick. They had no idea where it would be when they traded for it. I'm sure they'd be happy with the 9th pick.

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Why would anything be messed up? Even if Ottawa forfeited Colorado gets the 9th pick. They had no idea where it would be when they traded for it. I'm sure they'd be happy with the 9th pick.

 

Not when the team that has the pick finishes dead last and they "normally" would have 100% for a top 4 pick.

 

A tournament with teams playing games for other teams picks is not the way to go. Besides, how would the tournament structure be? last place vs 16th last, 2nd last vs 15th last etc? Then the entire bottom 5 is out in round 1 and none of them even picking top 5. This would just help the mediocre teams, not the shitty ones.

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Not when the team that has the pick finishes dead last and they "normally" would have 100% for a top 4 pick.

 

A tournament with teams playing games for other teams picks is not the way to go. Besides, how would the tournament structure be? last place vs 16th last, 2nd last vs 15th last etc? Then the entire bottom 5 is out in round 1 and none of them even picking top 5. This would just help the mediocre teams, not the shitty ones.

Not really. Anything can happen in a 1 game playoff or single elimination tourney.
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