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Are the Draft Lottery Rule Changes Fair to the Sabres?

August 21, 2014, 2:37 PM ET [136 Comments]
James Tanner
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Yesterday the NHL announced that it would be taking steps to change the draft lottery in an attempt to "better reflect increasing competitive balance," a phrase so fraught with meaningless jargon that it just offers very little by way of explanation.

The NHL is a corporation run by lawyers and so it makes sense that their press releases would be filled with the kind of language that manages to look fancy but says very little, so I am not surprised, just frustrated by their reasoning for the change to the draft lottery rules. What that phrase (the one in quotations above) means if you bother to think about it enough to deconstruct it, is that by changing the lottery so that the last place team has a significantly less chance of getting the first over pick, the lottery will then better mirror the fact that the league is fraught with parity. In other words, the teams in the league are so close in terms of talent levels that it's not fair to give the last place team the best player automatically - which, stop me if I am wrong, but that doesn't really make for sound reasoning. I mean, if teams are that close, that whoever finishes last was probably just unlucky and thus deserving of the good luck of getting the top pick.

It would have at least been honest if the NHL said "We are changing the rules to discourage teams from losing on purpose, and we are taking these steps today because the biggest prize in a decade is available in the next draft."

They should have said that, because there is only one legitimate reason to change the lottery: to deincentivize a team from intentionally losing in order to secure the best player.

On the surface, preventing tanking sounds reasonable, except that, if you really think about it, laws to prevent tanking shouldn't really be necessary as the drawbacks for doing so are sever anyways.

The detractions inherent in tanking should be enough to prevent anyone from doing it. To whit: decreased attendance, broken trust with the league, fans and other gms, incurring the anger of the commissioner and peers, exposing the young players you're trying to develop to a culture of losing and failure, setting a bad example, alienating the players you have and plan to keep, breaching trust with anyone who signed with you and the fact that no player is guaranteed to work out and be worth it. I'm sure there are more, but you get the point.

Since the detractions of tanking should be enough to prevent it, it would be reasonable to have a laissez faire attitude about the whole thing and let the chips fall where they may. However, that is only if you don't care which franchises get which players, and I think it's fair to say the NHL does. If I was in charge of marketing and making money and growing the league, I would certainly prefer to have the best, most marketable players in the best spots.

There can be no question that the NHL is fair and impartial - otherwise Crosby would play in New York and Stamkos would be a Leaf. What I am saying though, is that in certain cases - whether or not it actually happens - it would be in the NHL's interest, if the opportunity arose, to do what it could to increase the odds that a player such as Connor McDavid goes to a team that can best help the NHL as a whole. I am not saying it happens or that it has happened, but just that it would be a logical move if the chance came up. Like, for instance, if a season was wiped out and any team could get the prized pick and it just happened to go to a bankrupt team on the verge of folding.

As I said, the drawbacks inherent in tanking are so great that policing it is kind of pointless. Furthermore, Tanking and building through the draft is just one of the many options NHL GMs have at their disposal and since we haven't seen a thoroughly intentional tank job in the NHL - at least an obvious and detrimental one - since the 1991 Nordiques in their attempt to win the Eric Lindros lottery, this can reasonably called a solution without a problem.

If one is skeptical and perhaps cynical, this move doesn't look like the NHL made it with the fairness of all 30 clubs in mind. Connor McDavid is going to be drafted in 2015 and if you except the Crosby draft (coming off a lockout and so no one could tank) McDavid is possibly the hottest junior commodity since Lindros, and the NHL is seemingly concerned with having several teams attempt to kind of, sort of lose on purpose to get a shot at him - especially when the consolation prize is the almost as highly regarded Jack Eichel. So it does seem like a reasonable move by the league, even if their language to justify it was ridiculous. My problem with it is strictly the timing of it.

I do get why the NHL would make this move - even if it isn't exactly going to prevent teams from doing this anyways if they want to - and that is because it least it looks like they are acting to prevent tanking, which is all you can really ask. Sometimes making a symbolic move can be enough to maintain your integrity and so I can't exactly criticize this move in that light.

But this is where things get complicated, because on one hand you have a symbolic move meant to show the league is serious about preventing a tankfest, but on the other, the same move appears to punish a single team and may - to the conspiracy minded at least - look like they are trying to improve their own chances for putting a marketable player in a more tenable (to the league) city.

The NHL is sort of in a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. They need to appear to be doing something to prevent several teams from phoning it in next year because the integrity of the league will take a hit if there are several teams who appear to be losing on purpose, but if they do, it looks like they are orchestrating - even just slightly - where McDavid will or won't play. The NHL should have forseen that one day a prospect would arrive that would be so tantalizing as to promote tanking and done this years ago, because what they are doing right now is - even if it isn't intentional - is kind of screwing the Buffalo Sabres.

The Sabres have been dismantling their roster for the last year - with the exception of signing Matt Moulson (which is similar to the NHL's move in that it won't prevent their tanking but makes it appear that they are trying to win). And that is their prerogative. They have done nothing to violate the rules of the NHL and they are operating within the system as they see fit. They have so far accumulated 3 first rounders for next years draft and seem to be the obvious pick to finish last in the NHL this year.

It seems unfair to me that the NHL is intervening with a rule change that comes immediately into effect when the Sabres have been operating under the old rules up to now. If one were very cynical, they could even view this as an attempt by the NHL to at least increase the chances that McDavid - who stands to be the face of the NHL for years to come - play in a more preferred market.

Buffalo is what it is - a medium market with a lot of hockey fans - which means they can't really grow the game nor offer a premier market for the player. Nearly every other team offers more to the league in terms of marketing potential than Buffalo. Any Canadian team, New York, LA etc are all huge markets and any place like Carolina, Arizona or Florida at least offer the ability for the league to grow the game similar to a Gretzky/LA Kings scenario.

Now, maybe the Sabres are not the last place team next year and this point is moot, but as things appear today, it looks like the Sabres are being screwed over by the NHL for doing nothing but following the rules, because, should they finish last, as nearly every thinks they will, they will now have a 20% less chance of landing their franchise player.

As the lottery was previously constructed, the last place team had a 25% chance of winning the lottery, significantly higher than any other team and the worst they could do is drop to third.

Now the worst team will have a 20% less chance of winning the lottery, as their chances move from 25 to 20%.
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