Overhauling the draft process would solve NHL’s tanking issue
Every time the Knicks step onto the court these days, it’s clear — their strategy isn’t based on trying to win games this season. Their strategy is completely about the future. They won’t use the word, but everyone knows what they are doing. It’s called tanking.
The issue of tanking has become one of the most compelling subjects in sports. While it may have originated decades ago, it feels as if it’s more prevalent now than ever. It’s a polarizing philosophy that engulfs organizations, media coverage and fan bases.
That prompted The Post to explore this fascinating subject. In this ongoing series, we’ll examine how and why tanking became so prominent, reveal how fans view the strategy and propose our solutions to fix it.
The proposition under which the NHL, if not all professional sports leagues, should operate is inarguable. If it were subject to a vote, it would pass without debate, let alone opposition. The proposition is that no franchise should ever be rewarded for trying to lose.
The conversation/debate about tanking is largely a clinical one absent flesh and blood. But in the midst of covering a season in which Rangers’ defeats can be interpreted as victories and victories as defeats because of the draft system under which the worst of the worst gets the best chance to get the first pick, this leads to going down a rabbit hole that creates the antithesis of competition. No team should ever be penalized for trying to win.
You can cite your five-year plans and you can cite the success story of a team like Pittsburgh that was both bad enough for a long enough time and lucky enough in the lottery to come away with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in back-to-back years as a way to sell tanking to the fan base.
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But for every Pittsburgh, there is an Edmonton. Come to think of it, for every Pittsburgh there are multiple franchises that have sunk to the bottom and stayed close enough to it to have become reliable sinkholes. The Oilers, whose inverse ratio of success on the ice as opposed to in the lottery has made the organization into a laughingstock, have missed the playoffs 11 of the past 12 years. Carolina has missed nine straight seasons, Buffalo seven straight, Florida 11 of the past 13 years, Arizona six straight seasons, Colorado seven of the past 10 years, the Devils five of the past six and the Islanders eight of the past 11.
What do these organizations have in common? Annual high picks. What else do these perpetual ne’er-do-wells have in common? None is considered a legitimate Stanley Cup threat any time soon.
The race to the bottom not only is an exercise that can hollow the soul out of an organization, it creates the promise of a prize at the end of the long and winding road that more often than not is fool’s gold. So putting an end to the concept of tanking benefits everyone except club executives seeking to buy time on the job.
The only way to prevent tanking in the NHL is to end the draft as we know it. The NHL’s lottery system under which the top three picks are all subject to pingpong ball drawings has made the process a more equitable one, but the draft still is designed to reward failure and organizations still stand to benefit more by losing more.
You could penalize perpetual failure by prohibiting teams from drafting in the top five for more than two consecutive seasons. A third straight bottom-five finish would mean lowering of 10 positions in the draft. A fourth straight bottom-five finish would mean lowering of 15 positions. Still, that might not discourage some teams from selling out in any given season.
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You could end the lottery and institute a first round in which all non-playoff teams have the same odds at claiming the first-overall pick, instituting a rule that would bar teams from getting the top pick in consecutive years. No team would tank the season for a 6.25 percent shot at winning the drawing. That’s better.
But here’s the idea that would be the most dramatic and would add an entire new dynamic to the offseason: Allow players to be selected by multiple teams within the first round. Give teams a hard cap with which to sign first-rounders (a quadruple cap!), limit teams to being able to sign only one of their first-round selections and have them place their bids while the brightest teenage players in the world are put up for auction. Imagine the wild summers that would ensue.
You say, what about a place like Edmonton? What if no one wants to sign with them? They might want to win some games, that’s what, instead of hoping to be rewarded for being bad. No team would ever tank again.