A new method for the draft lottery

[BlastPast]

Well, as it appears we may be headed for another draft lottery I thought I would dust off an idea I had a while back to make the draft lottery odds more accurately reflect a teams performance .  I can't be the only one who finds it inequitable that 2 or more teams can have the same point total but because of ROW and how the odds are designated they can have relatively differing chances.  

 

For example, as of right now NYR and Arizona are both at .500 but because of how the current draft lottery works NYR have a 5% chance at #1 and Arizona have 3.5% .  This gives NYR a relative advantage of approx. 43 %. ( 5-3.5=1.5.  1.5/3.5%=~43%).  Does this seem fair ? Of course not. What I am going to propose will give each team exactly the chances they deserve in accordance with their point total relative to their competition.

 

The  current format is static in that  odds are pre-designated according to where a team finishes in the standing.  Ties are broken, for the most part, with ROW (regulation and overtime wins).  What I suggest is a system that is more dynamic and is based on a teams point totals relative to other non-playoff teams. It would better account for parity and get rid of scenarios (like the one described above) where a team had a large statistical advantage despite having identical or very close point totals.  

 

Here is what I am suggesting:

 

You start with a figure of 164 representing the point total of a perfect season (82 games X 2 pts.) You then deduct the points accumulated throughout the season by each team (exp.  last season Buffalo finished with 62 points so for them it would be 164-62=102) You then add up all those figures for each team and get a total.  Using last seasons totals I have done this for all eligible teams.

 

The total for all 15 non-playoff teams is 1290. You then use the teams number and this total to get a percentage , this represents the team's lottery odds. Therefore Buffalo would have 102/1290 % = 7.9% chance of #1 overall. I am only only going to do the calculations for first place to make things more wieldy but it can be used to designate odds for 2nd and third if necessary . I would disregard ROW ,etc in favor of giving tied teams the same percentage. (ie. if two teams have 80 points, they have the same odds)

 

The following is a list of odds for this past draft lottery using this method. As you can see, it evens things out while still giving poorer performing teams an appropriate advantage. All figures rounded to 1 decimal place but in practice should go to 2.

 

1) Buf-102/1290%= 7.9%

2)Ott-97/1290= 7.5%

3)Ari- 94/1290= 7.3%

4)Mtl- 93- 7.2%

5)Van- 7.1%

6)Det-7.1%

7)Chi-6.8%

8)Nyr-6.7%

9)Edm-6.7%

10)Nyi-6.5%

11)Car-6.3%

12)Cal-6.2%

13)Dal-5.7%

14)Stl-5.6%

15)Flo-5.4%

 

With the current method the last place team has 18.5 X the odds the 15th worst team has (18.5% Vs. 1 %)  giving them , I would say, an extremely disproportionate advantage. 

 

I think with this method I would actually advocate for the lottery to be drawn for only first overall , this way a team can only slide a maximum of one spot. This method may  also have the effect of diminishing the benefit of tanking . Fans of these teams can now be less disappointed with wins down the stretch knowing it won't hurt their odds too severely. 

 

 

[-AJ-]

I like the idea, but I personally like the idea that bad teams are more likely to get high picks. I think there's a balance to be found so that teams don't tank, but I think the NHL has found that with their current lottery system, as we've seen several lotteries go against the worst teams. I would like your method more if it weighed more heavily in favour of the worst teams.

[smithers joe]

i think the weakest teams should get the three picks but if teams are selling off their best players or sitting them out to further their chances of getting the best picks, should not be allowed top 3 picks. just my opinion. i hate tankers.

[Ghostsof1915]

Or we can just scrap the draft lottery. Then have a snake draft. 

So the worst team gets 1st.

But in round two they don't pick until 62

Then round 3, they pick 63. 

This way the Stanley Cup winning team gets last pick of the first round, and the first pick of the second round. 

 

Because the draft lottery is doing nothing to stop tanking. And this does give contenders a chance to have a decent 2nd and 4th round pick. 

 

[Rick Blight]

There does not appear to be a fair and equitable system to resolve the issue of tanking and giving the "true" worst teams the best chance of success at the next draft so I guess I am fine with the current system that will not guarantee tanking teams any better than a 4th overall pick.

Some divisions are stronger than others giving some teams tougher schedules than others, some teams get a lot more significant injuries. If Toronto lost Matthews and Marner for a good portion of this season while Nylander was holding out do people really believe the Leafs would be a playoff team? If Edmonton lost McDavid for 20 games due to injury does anyone believe they would finish anywhere other than dead last? Neither team would "truly" be as bad as their record would indicate (maybe Edmonton would...LOL) but this same scenario could apply to any team. If the true purpose of the draft is to give preference to helping the worst teams then you need a better way to determine who the worst teams are.

Personally, I view all non-playoff teams as equals and would be fine with all of them having equal odds for the lottery.

[cleowin]

31 minutes ago, Ghostsof1915 said:

Or we can just scrap the draft lottery. Then have a snake draft. 

So the worst team gets 1st.

But in round two they don't pick until 62

Then round 3, they pick 63. 

This way the Stanley Cup winning team gets last pick of the first round, and the first pick of the second round. 

 

Because the draft lottery is doing nothing to stop tanking. And this does give contenders a chance to have a decent 2nd and 4th round pick. 

 

If we do this, you know that good teams will theoretically stay good, and bad teams will struggle to get better?

My solution is to have a separate 'tournament' that goes after the season is over, and have all the teams play each other for the '1st' round pick, with the order of elimination determining the rest of the standings. The worst team gets home ice advantage, 7 game series, give fans something to cheer for at the end of the season

[Glug Datt]

maybe scrap the lottery & then all the teams who finish below Van should get relegated to the AHL.. 

 

just a idea.. 

[BlastPast]

10 minutes ago, Shaelon said:

If we do this, you know that good teams will theoretically stay good, and bad teams will struggle to get better?

My solution is to have a separate 'tournament' that goes after the season is over, and have all the teams play each other for the '1st' round pick, with the order of elimination determining the rest of the standings. The worst team gets home ice advantage, 7 game series, give fans something to cheer for at the end of the season

The NHLPA would never go for this. You can't expect players to compete and risk injury for something that is ultimately beneficial  to the team and not the individual players.  I would suggest any gimmicky methods would not be acceptable. 

 

3 minutes ago, Glug Datt said:

maybe scrap the lottery & then all the teams who finish below Van should get relegated to the AHL.. 

 

just a idea.. 

This one I can get behind though !

[Where's Wellwood]

Then the odds are far too even. You're going to get a decent team winning the 1st overall project pick a lot of the time. Might as well just pick one non-playoff team team out of a hat at that point

[cleowin]

2 minutes ago, BlastPast said:

The NHLPA would never go for this. You can't expect players to compete and risk injury for something that is ultimately beneficial  to the team and not the individual players.  I would suggest any gimmicky methods would not be acceptable. 

 

This one I can get behind though !

Oh I know, it's just a fantasy.

 

Ideally, Id be in favour of this method:

 

the better you are, the better the pick, 17th picks 1st, 18th picks 2nd, etc.

 

The other way is to assign an even % of winning the lottery for ALL non-playoff picks. Then there is no point in tanking

[BlastPast]

7 minutes ago, Where's Wellwood said:

Then the odds are far too even. You're going to get a decent team winning the 1st overall project pick a lot of the time. Might as well just pick one non-playoff team team out of a hat at that point

In this method the last placed team Buf(62 points) has a 46.3 % better chance than the 15th worst team Flo(94 points).  That's a large advantage. Some of the other teams are even because their point totals are even. If one has 82 and another has 80 should the latter have a large advantage over the former?

[BlastPast]

8 minutes ago, Shaelon said:

Oh I know, it's just a fantasy.

 

Ideally, Id be in favour of this method:

 

the better you are, the better the pick, 17th picks 1st, 18th picks 2nd, etc.

 

The other way is to assign an even % of winning the lottery for ALL non-playoff picks. Then there is no point in tanking

Then there is no benefit (or even a disincentive ) for worse performing teams. That , imo, is too far to the other extreme.

[cleowin]

Just now, BlastPast said:

Then there is no benefit (or even a disincentive ) for worse performing teams. That , imo, is too far to the other extreme.

Perfect, that means GM's will not purposely put their teams in a position to tank, its disgusting tbh

[BlastPast]

Not all bad teams are tanking . Some just don't have the personnel.

[DADDYROCK]

How about put a limit on the amount of top1 through 5 picks a team gets in a decade,

then they won't have a team like the oilers tanking constantly or being incredibly lucky with 4-1OA picks in just a few years.

[BlastPast]

I can agree on a cap on consecutive #1 picks at 2.  

[stawns]

1 hour ago, BlastPast said:

Well, as it appears we may be headed for another draft lottery I thought I would dust off an idea I had a while back to make the draft lottery odds more accurately reflect a teams performance .  I can't be the only one who finds it inequitable that 2 or more teams can have the same point total but because of ROW and how the odds are designated they can have relatively differing chances.  

 

For example, as of right now NYR and Arizona are both at .500 but because of how the current draft lottery works NYR have a 5% chance at #1 and Arizona have 3.5% .  This gives NYR a relative advantage of approx. 43 %. ( 5-3.5=1.5.  1.5/3.5%=~43%).  Does this seem fair ? Of course not. What I am going to propose will give each team exactly the chances they deserve in accordance with their point total relative to their competition.

 

The  current format is static in that  odds are pre-designated according to where a team finishes in the standing.  Ties are broken, for the most part, with ROW (regulation and overtime wins).  What I suggest is a system that is more dynamic and is based on a teams point totals relative to other non-playoff teams. It would better account for parity and get rid of scenarios (like the one described above) where a team had a large statistical advantage despite having identical or very close point totals.  

 

Here is what I am suggesting:

 

You start with a figure of 164 representing the point total of a perfect season (82 games X 2 pts.) You then deduct the points accumulated throughout the season by each team (exp.  last season Buffalo finished with 62 points so for them it would be 164-62=102) You then add up all those figures for each team and get a total.  Using last seasons totals I have done this for all eligible teams.

 

The total for all 15 non-playoff teams is 1290. You then use the teams number and this total to get a percentage , this represents the team's lottery odds. Therefore Buffalo would have 102/1290 % = 7.9% chance of #1 overall. I am only only going to do the calculations for first place to make things more wieldy but it can be used to designate odds for 2nd and third if necessary . I would disregard ROW ,etc in favor of giving tied teams the same percentage. (ie. if two teams have 80 points, they have the same odds)

 

The following is a list of odds for this past draft lottery using this method. As you can see, it evens things out while still giving poorer performing teams an appropriate advantage. All figures rounded to 1 decimal place but in practice should go to 2.

 

1) Buf-102/1290%= 7.9%

2)Ott-97/1290= 7.5%

3)Ari- 94/1290= 7.3%

4)Mtl- 93- 7.2%

5)Van- 7.1%

6)Det-7.1%

7)Chi-6.8%

8)Nyr-6.7%

9)Edm-6.7%

10)Nyi-6.5%

11)Car-6.3%

12)Cal-6.2%

13)Dal-5.7%

14)Stl-5.6%

15)Flo-5.4%

 

With the current method the last place team has 18.5 X the odds the 15th worst team has (18.5% Vs. 1 %)  giving them , I would say, an extremely disproportionate advantage. 

 

I think with this method I would actually advocate for the lottery to be drawn for only first overall , this way a team can only slide a maximum of one spot. This method may  also have the effect of diminishing the benefit of tanking . Fans of these teams can now be less disappointed with wins down the stretch knowing it won't hurt their odds too severely. 

 

 

get rid of the lottery altogether, imo.  

[Where's Wellwood]

41 minutes ago, BlastPast said:

In this method the last placed team Buf(62 points) has a 46.3 % better chance than the 15th worst team Flo(94 points).  That's a large advantage. Some of the other teams are even because their point totals are even. If one has 82 and another has 80 should the latter have a large advantage over the former?

Relative advantage is misleading without considering the absolute advantage which is about 2% from last to 15th place. 

 

The last team to make the playoffs doesn't need odds that close to the worst team

[BlastPast]

5 minutes ago, Where's Wellwood said:

Relative advantage is misleading without considering the absolute advantage which is about 2% from last to 15th place. 

 

The last team to make the playoffs doesn't need odds that close to the worst team

Uhh, relative advantage does take into account absolute advantage, that's how you come to the number. Relative is a function of the absolute.  Who cares if the absolute is 2 or 3 or 10, it's the relative that shows how big the advantage actually is.

[TheGuardian_]

I came up with a full proof draft system that prevents tanking, multiple #1 overalls, helps the truly needy teams, is simple and transparent. It also takes into account teams that are not spending to the cap and just really badly run.

 

Basically it has to do with the first round only, can be either the bottom 3 to 5 picks, uses multiple years in the standings, no single season tanking for an advantage of top 3 to 5 selections even for the bottom 3 to 5  teams, rotates #1 overall so no team can get that pick more than once every 3 to 5 years, takes into account a team that makes the playoffs or is a bottom feeder longer than 3 to 5 years and bumps the next worst up to the 3 to 5 lottery. The remainder of the rounds are by current standings.

 

A team getting a the number one overall might be determined by the other two teams that are the worst in the league for the same time period, if the same bottom three team for three years each would end up with a #1, 2 & 3 then the #4 (or 5 & 6 if the same 3 bottom team for three years) team bumps a team out of the bottom three lottery,

 

 Bottom three lottery teams could be known before the TDL every year and teams could build around foreknowledge of draft position, other teams would/could be more encouraged to make trades knowing their likely drat position, they could set a value.

 

I had all the possibilities mapped out but unfortunately the thread was erased because it was basically in the wrong forum and already there was content similar.

 

As an example Vancouver, Buffalo and Arizona would be the bottom three teams in a lottery for #1 overall but Buffalo would be exempt from #1 because they got one last draft so Arizona and Vancouver would essentially be inn a two team lottery for #1 with Buffalo being in a two team lottery for #2,  because they already, not team can be bottom three lottery for more than three years.