THE NHL Entry Draft is an anachronism, created in 1963 when there was no such thing as free agency, refined in 1995 when there was no such thing as a salary cap to include a five-team, weighted lottery for the first-overall pick.
But no matter the circumstance, the structure of the draft rewards, if not implicitly encourages, losing teams to lose more and more spectacularly in order to gain the most advantageous pick possible.
Finish with the worst-overall record and the percentages give your team a 48.2 percent chance of getting the top pick and 100-percent chance of getting one of the first two picks. Finish with the sixth-worst overall record and your team has a zero-percent chance of getting the first pick.
No team should ever benefit by losing games the final month of the season just as no team should be penalized for winning games down the stretch. No organization ever should be confronted with what is the entirely rational decision between short-term integrity and long-term survival, if not success.
Please let’s stop the nonsense espoused most recently by Toronto coach Ron Wilson about how maneuvering to finish at the bottom creates a culture of losing that can forever stain a franchise. Or are the Penguins, who tanked to get Mario Lemieux in 1984, simply an exception to the rule invariably cited by all coaches, who always think in the present because they are never guaranteed a future?
A team finishes with the fifth-fewest points can get the first overall pick, but the team that finishes with the sixth-worst record has no chance? Why? And what organization on the four/five/six bubble the final week of the season would choose to start its No. 1 goaltender and best lineup when not doing so is clearly in the franchise’s long-term best interests?
By the way. Gary Bettman lost whatever authority he might attempt to impose on teams to ensure they play their strongest “anti-tank” lineups when he allowed teams to send home and sit out players leading up to the trade deadline.
There should be only one boundary applied to the lottery and it’s the one between making the playoffs and not making the playoffs. Every team that misses the playoffs should have a chance to get the first-overall pick in the draft under a variation of the formula that was applied to the 2005 post-lockout, 30-team lottery.
The NHL and NHLPA should amend the CBA and immediately to move to a 14-team lottery that would be weighted on two factors: 1) the number of consecutive years out of the playoffs; and, 2) the number of previous first-overall picks within a three- to five-year period.
Not only would such a system eliminate any questions of propriety down the stretch, it would create great anticipation and interest in the lottery.
Your favorite team misses the playoffs by a point, but still has a shot at the first-overall pick? You’re watching the lottery.
These aren’t the ’60s anymore. These aren’t the ’90s either. It’s time for the NHL Entry Draft to enter the cap-sized 21st Century.
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Guaranteed to happen at the Entry Draft in Montreal, or the money back you spent to read this on the Internet: Vincent Lecavalier traded to the Canadiens.
Greatest Devils: 1. Scott Stevens; 2. Martin Brodeur; 3. Patrik Elias; 4. Scott Niedermayer; 5. John MacLean.
There remains no more overrated coach in the NHL than Jacques Lemaire, whose teams have combined to win three playoff rounds (one with the Devils as a conference No. 1 seed in 1997, two with the Wild in 2003) since leading New Jersey to the Stanley Cup in 1995.
But that’s what happens when a coach believes systems and not players win championships.
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John Tortorella, take-charge guy, refused to answer questions about becoming the winningest American-born coach in NHL history with 245 when the Rangers defeated the Canadiens in Montreal on Tuesday.
“It’s not about me. Don’t ask about me,” he said repeatedly and dismissively. “It’s not about me, don’t ask about me.”
You know what, Tortorella is right. It’s not about him. It’s about Lecavalier, Marty St. Louis, Nikolai Khabibulin, Tim Taylor, Dave Andreychuk and Dan Boyle. It’s about Rick Dudley, the general manager in Tampa who hired him and Jay Feaster, the general manager who got him the players with whom he won the Cup in 2004.
It’s about Peter Laviolette, whom he passed, and it’s about the historical context provided by people such as Herb Brooks, Bob Johnson and Robbie Ftorek who helped pave the way.
It’s about everybody else, not about Tortorella, the coach was right about that. It’s unfortunate he couldn’t spare the two minutes to acknowledge that.