The Pittsburgh Penguins are the worst team in the NHL at getting production from players 24 years of age or younger.
This is the product of a team that has two superstars in their prime trying to win the Stanley Cup each year. The Penguins can get by trading away prime draft picks for a short bit of time but eventually that will catch up to them.
Also complicating the problem is that they haven't always made the best choices with the veteran players they acquire via trade when giving up drafting assets. Doug Murray FOR TWO SECOND ROUND PICKS is a really great way to stifle your ability to get lucky on prospects in the draft.
A first round pick was given for Jarome Iginla who was a luxury item and not a necessity given that the Penguins had literally no need for a top six right winger is another wasted pick. The misuse of this asset after acquisition only compounded the issue further.
Trading a second round pick for Daniel Winnik when he was a free agent for nearly a month in the summer of 2014 is an unwarranted expense if you get ahead of the game and sign a player like him instead of trading for him at deadline time.
So we have three examples there where one was just a flat out terrible trade, one was a trade for a piece not really needed and the third was trading for a useful piece but only because the team lacked foresight to sign him themselves.
Eventually the Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin window will close and then the Penguins will need to find quality youth players, preferably superstar caliber, but as you can see it is no easy task given what Buffalo, Arizona, and Edmonton are going through to try and get it. Teams can't just sit back and hope the Boston Bruins trade away yet another superstar center (Thornton, Seguin) because after Bergeron (who they aren't trading) they don't have any of those players anymore.
If teams aren't (foolishly) willing to trade you that superstar player then you'll have to draft them and the only way to find that kind of talent is to draft early. Drafting early in the current system means being a really terrible hockey team.
Since this is the reality of the current setup you need to go all in while you have your stud players because when your studs aren't studs anymore replacing them is extra hard to come by.
This is designed parity. The only way to change this natural cycle would be to completely change the landscape of how NHL teams can acquire young talent.
The first option is something that Travis Yost wrote in detail about and that would be to
eliminate the NHL draft altogether
Yep, you read that right. No more NHL draft. I am in favor of this.
It is a radical change in approach and I wouldn't expect most fans to dive head first into acceptance because let's be honest, hockey people don't like change.
In this option there would be no more worrying about trading draft picks away. You put together the best roster you can while staying compliant under the hard cap. If you want to spend huge money on a player coming into the league who has never played a professional game; that is the team's prerogative. Sometimes you'll hit, sometimes you'll miss. Everybody has the same cap ceiling. Those that do their homework better will be rewarded. Those they don't will not have as much success. The best organizations are rewarded and there is no incentive to tank in order to land quality players who are young. The only way team's are punished is through their own incompetence which is exactly how it should be.
The idea that all the big market teams would just scoop up all the prospects is more or less false. Everybody has the same hard cap ceiling. The same teams wouldn't be able to spend spend spend every year.
Nobody would ever have to go through a completely painful rebuilding process if they planned appropriately.
The other suggestion came from a
Jonathan Willis article from Sportsnet
At the 2012 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, PhD candidate Adam Gold presented a simple solution. Instead of relying on a lottery that actually serves to diminish the value of games late in the season, Gold proposed that draft order should be determined by total points recorded after a club is eliminated from the post-season.
This suggestion is also better than what we have in the status quo. Nobody wants to see what has happened with the Buffalo Sabres and the Arizona Coyotes this year. And let me be clear that this isn't the fault of those two teams. It is the fault of the league and their current setup. Never fault a team for trying to take advantage of the parameters they are given. If the parameters encourage things that are not liked, change the parameters. Until then tank on Buffalo and Arizona.
The proposal Jonathan Willis mentions makes it so it is in the team's best interest to compete and win to the very last day of the season. This increases the entertainment value while also making the rebuilding process a lot less painful than it needs to be.
Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin, Pavel Datsyuk/Henrik Zetterberg, Ryan Getzlaf/Corey Perry are too old now?
You need to purposely lose now to replenish the cupboard.
That is stupid. The current setup is stupid. Both of the aforementioned ideas above are an improvement over the status quo.
Ultimately the Penguins aren't getting a lot of production from players 24 and younger for reasons stated above and that will work for now. However, eventually there will be a time period when it isn't good enough and they will have to reload. How painful will that process be? Hopefully less painful than what it has been for some of the teams going through it now.
survey services
****
Brand new Hockey Hurts podcast goes into detail about eliminating the NHL draft as well as the idea presented by Jonathan Willis. It also discusses a very progressive change to the NHL playoff seeding system. You can find that
here.
Thanks for reading!
Follow me on twitter
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»