Everyone is talking tanking.
It’s a blight on the National Hockey League.
It’s an embarrassment to the sport.
The Sabres and Coyotes have let down their fan bases.
The Leafs have become a complete joke.
Its happened forever. The best example was that classic TSN documentary on the Penguins tanking for Lemieux which featured the behind the scenes discussions with the Penguins coach Lou Angotti around topics like player selection, goalie selection. Guys getting traded when they played well, including Mike Bullard to Calgary for Dan Quinn.
It was a complete mess.
So many different ideas have been bounced around, all have their merit, all have their downsides. I’m sure mine will be no different.
My Premise:
- You take the standings at the half way point of the NHL season
- You measure how the teams finish the schedule versus that midway point
- Teams that have fallen off the most will lose a predetermined fraction of their lottery odds
- Teams that have missed the playoffs but improved in since the midway point will gain some of those percentage points
How would the 2015 Draft Lottery look if the season ended today?
The best second half team in the National Hockey League is the Minnesota Wild who have improved their winning percentage from .488 at the halfway point to .625 now, and increase of 28%.
This matters very little as they won’t be a lottery team.
The 2nd best improvement is the Edmonton Oilers, and that does in fact matter in my suggested system. The Oilers are a terrible 0.330 win percentage in the first half of the season. They are still an ugly 0.388 but that 0.058 improvement is good for 18% and 2nd spot in most improved team.
That would work in Edmonton’s favour.
On the other side of the ledger you have the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Leafs were a 0.547 team in the first half of the season but now sit at .408, for a 25% reduction of their win percentage. Under my system they would get hammered and demoted in the draft ranking for chances of winning the lottery.
Some specifics …
The penalties are applied to the original lottery odds on a sliding scale methodology. That is if you are the worst tanker you will lose 25% of your lottery odds. If you are the 2nd worst tanker you lose 22.5%, the third 20% and so on through ten spots.
These penalties in this year’s case accrue 8.34% of penalty lottery odds that get applied to the top 5 improvers over the same time frame. These gains are applied using the same scale (5 steps deep). So the top team gets 25% of the 8.34%, the second best team gets 22.5% of the 8.34%, etc.
The table below shows the results.
This method would have the Sabres retain the top lottery odds selection as they were worse in the 2nd half (2nd most penalized team) but not to the extent where they lost the top spot in the lottery. They did however lose 2.5% off their chances.
The Oilers would move up and have the 2nd best chance, adding 2.08% to their original 3rd place 11.5% odds, and sit at 13.58% chance.
Arizona would drop one spot with the biggest actual decline in percentage chance of 3.08%, down to 10.46%.
The biggest losers of the process would be the Leafs that would go from 4th and 9.5% to 7th and 7.13% because of their huge drop off in play.
The other advantage to the system is the Ottawa Senators example. Lets assume the Sens come up just short in their improbable Hamburgler run to the playoffs, in this case they’d gain 1.67% in lottery odds for their efforts and move from the 13th to the 10th spot in the lottery.
The system penalizes tanking, rewards late season runs that come up just short, both huge gains over the current system.
It wouldn’t snare a team that through away an entire season, but then teams that do this are likely in danger of losing fan bases altogether meaning this likelihood isn’t that high.
The other issue with most of these suggestions including my own, is the trade deadline, and how teams like Buffalo would be reluctant to sell at the deadline for fear of incurring too great a penalty for falling off. Teams would have to weigh the top lottery position and the top penalty position to see where the optimal spot would be.
I’ve never liked even odds for all non playoff teams.
I’m not a big fan of all 5 bottom teams have the same odds because teams will just tank to get into the bottom five.
I think the even odds for all 30 teams suggestion is a little extreme.
I like how this method measures up.
Flames Note:
The Flames were the 6th best team in terms of improving their win percentage from the midway point to today with an 8% gain.
