« Tank », ou affaiblir délibérément votre effectif pour pouvoir perdre des matchs et recevoir des choix au repêchage en échange… Est-ce que cela a du sens ? Est-ce une bonne stratégie ? Existe-t-il un moyen d’empêcher les équipes de le faire ? Cela et bien plus encore dans cette édition du District 5. #hockey #nhl
@Sharks de San José
42 Comments
Great breakdown, would love to see your take on the salary cap era CBAs with lockouts and cap circumvention controversy.
Yeah no one tanks, but they do rebuild
Yes and No. Tanking works in that you are guaranteed to get blue chip prospects and higher odds of getting that generational talent that every cup winning team has. But it doesn’t work if you don’t have a good organization and culture to surround them with as well as making smart trades, free agent signings, and draft picks in the latter rounds. Buffalo is a prime example of tanking not working while the Bruins are an example of team not really tanking but have great drafting and prospect development in the later rounds. I mean all of their stars aren’t even top 10 picks. They drafted Patrice Bergeron in the 2nd round lol.
YES!!! District 5 POSTED TODAY!!!
I love the way that Dallas has built their team with Heiskanen being the only high pick in in the draft. Just crushing it with their late 1sts and 2nd rounders in the last several years.
We have an imperfect situation and you're proposing a solution that is honestly slightly further from ideal, especially given it takes attention away from the true playoffs. I'm not even saying I'd hate it because I think the dynamic of 17-20th grinding it out to receive 1st instead of 13th or something is high-stakes, but the whole criticism comes down to bad incentives and the idea that you're doing anything but shifting those bad incentives elsewhere is something I struggle to get behind. The positives are there but you just kind of glossed over the undeniable fact that several teams a year would rather be in that sweepstakes than the true playoffs. Hell, the bottom 8 playoff is still worse because it takes a midseason decent team and destroys it (or god forbid, more than 1 team) abruptly rather than having designated tank jobs like we have right now. I'd much rather see the Wild, Kraken, and Sabres still trucking along while we still have the Sharks, Ducks, and Hawks hanging out at the bottom, especially since a game against the Wild isn't exactly a freebie ordinarily. Better teams tanking also makes it so that if team A plays the decent Kraken 3/4 times early in the year, they get screwed when their rival plays the now suddenly tanking Kraken team 4/4 times in the latter half. If the Sharks are worse post-deadline, it's far less of an issue.
Also not entirely sure how to work through a situation where the Hurricanes had the Flyers pick or something. I'm sure there are plenty of other issues here once we really get into it. I think it's overwhelmingly obvious that there's a problem and you're right for pointing it out, but the proposed solutions seem impractical wherever I look. Seeing how the "market" reacts and what kind of Ducks or Sharks team we get when they have more incentive to compete is something that interests me, and changing culture among franchises is not something I want to ignore as a great positive, but I'm not sure everything will line up the way you'd expect, and overhauling the status quo seems like quite the adventure.
Either way, good video on something that does deserve exploration, but exploration of solutions needs to be thorough before we can really say they're truly wrong for going the route they're taking right now, you know?
The is one of the greatest sports in the world run by some of the dumbest Boomers that ever existed.
I have a really bad team based on draft numbers. Wow, we must stink! the lousy low picks we've gotten include:
Draft #
#25 David Pastrnak
# 63 David Krejci
#56 Zdeno Chara
#71 Brad Marchand
#45 Patrice Bergeron
#217 Our latest Stanley cup-winning goalie, Tim Thomas was drafted to the Nordics
B's latest Vezina awarded goalie, Ullmark, was drafted #163
Yeah we got to start tanking to get some better players…
🐻
Would be very interesting to see how the trade markets would change if there was a playoff for the picks
Strange. Didn’t really see you be critical of the Anaheim Ducks of late in this video…
Could have sworn they were ready to at least take a step forward by now, but it seems that in consecutive seasons they’ve finished in the bottom 3 trying to snag talents like Bedard and Celebrini.
Interesting that they feel that the missing piece for them to finally make it back are top talents available in the draft… on top of the stack of other top 10 talents they’ve been drafting since 2020.
But hey, maybe their failures are proof that you’re right… 🙂
just realise that u have 6k sub, thats an insanly good video for a small youtuber, good job continue like that!
yzerman is showing this video to the whole redwings organization
Love your content. Great video, but here are my strong opinions on tanking.
Tanking sucks, it has always sucked. It's a low percentage play.
For every team that makes off with a Lemieux, a Dozen teams end up with a replacement level player that they just wasted a whole fucking season on. The discussion would be different if you always got your guy, but most of the time you don't.
Losing is Rot. When you look at the extremely successful sports franchises, the ones that are always competing for decades on end. They simply do not tank. They spend there lul year competing, and then the they power back up with Drafting, development, free agency, and Trading.
Your an aging vet. Are you ever going to a team that has a history of tanking. One that might just fold one of your last seasons left.
Are you ever waiving a NMC to got a team that tanks?
A young stud that just wasn't a fit with his last team, does he want to go to a team that tanks?
You completely and totally fuck your ability to acquire players YOU ALREADY KNOW ARE GOOD by tanking. That's so important, Your guessing in the draft. For every can't miss prospect like Connor McDavid, you can name a dozen Can't miss prospects like Ryan Leaf, Or Nail Yakapov, or whoever the fuck.
When you look at the most successful team of the 2000s onward, The new England Patriots, the evidence becomes insanely clear. You focus on winning first and foremost. Getting your guy is even more important in football and the patriots have never tanked. Their Secret weapon is a dude they drafted in the 6th round. The Patriots won 6 superbowls in 17 years but what doesn't get talked about is that there was a decade long stretch where they didn't win the big game. A lot of those years they had major holes to fill, and yet they aren't ever tanking in those years, they are cobbling together the best team possible, and reloading with massive free agent picks that they can get, because everyone knows you can win in new england. They eventually reload and win 3 more. The result is a 20 year run that any team in any sport would absolutely kill for.
Mike Tomlin gets his team above .500 like clockwork, and he's got two Superbowl wins. doesn't this guy know that the way to win is losing on purpose.
The Chiefs, have picked 1st overall once in their entire teams history(Admittedly that pick was Eric Fisher, a very good player) Since the 90s they have been consistently winning 5-10 games, they hit a guy at 10 overall, and a tight end in the 3rd round, and suddenly they are off to the races. Superbowls on Superbowls.
Where are all the tanking teams. Where are the Bears, The Cardinals, The Browns, The Commanders, The Jets. They are getting all those high picks. Don't those turn into championships?
Hockey's the same thing. Drafting the right guys is a good part of winning, but ultimately a huge luck factor is involved there. when you tank for a chance at the right guy your hurting your fan base, your free agency power, your trading power, your ability to get good coaches, your ability to get good support staff, you're television time slots, your status withing the league, and a whole lot more. It's not worth it.
Tanking sucks.
eh im mixed on the other hand i do see the argument against tanking but on the other hand, some teams just need to tear everything down in order to be successful. Detroit is a good example and is an example you used for getting success without high picks but in the 2010s after their Stanley Cup win in 2008 their drafting in later rounds dried up and they started to give away draft picks and prospects for players from other teams to replace their aging core and it didn't work. They also started to give aging free agents bloated contracts and by the time Yzerman came back in 2019 Detroit had a terrible prospect pool and aging players on bloated contracts. They needed to tear it all down and start over and rebuild and there are other teams as well like Detroit such as san jose and chicago that needed to do full teardowns.
I understand the point you're making, and I am a Sharks fan so I might be speaking from a biased POV, however I really think you are looking at this too black and white. True, it has been frustrating living the past 5 years knowing that my hockey team sucks and I shouldn't expect anything from this year, but I know that realistically, this is the best thing we can do to win in the future. Your praise of the '19 Blues, '23 Knights and '07 Ducks is based on the fact that they made incredibly savvy roster moves that got them over the hump, but circumstances such as those are extraordinarily rare and cannot be relied on. Plus, in my opinion, I don't think it's admirable at all to win because you traded for star players, then sports would become a competition of "who is able to make this one trade". You talk about all the teams who have attempted tanking to have it not work, but don't mention the fact that there are far, far more teams that tried to make do with what they had and ended up in a constant state of mediocrity with little to no identity (the Coyotes are a prime example), or that had maybe one or two shots at a cup and came up short, and then had no aspirations for years after because they traded their assets away going all in.
As for tanking itself being bad, I don't love it, but it's undeniably the best path for a franchise when done right. A lot of failed rebuilds that are due to poor management would still be so without tanking, the tanking mentality isn't the problem, management is. But even with tanking rebuilds that fail due to mismanagement, it's still by far the best way to build a winner. There's a reason that the Penguins, Lightning, and Blackhawks have not only been consistently winning cups, but being a mainstay in the playoffs: They built a strong foundation through their draft that keeps them/kept them competitive for over a decade. They won as many cups as they did because they had many, many opportunities. Of course tanking doesn't reliably lead to cups, inherently only 1/32 teams win the cup every year, just because you don't win the cup doesn't mean you failed. Building a team, in my eyes, should be about maximizing your teams odds at winning a championship. Sure, the Blues won in 2019, but they've only had one other fair chance of winning it again since then (2022). The Knights won it last year, but they were a few games away from missing the playoffs the very next year, and it seems like that downward trend is going to continue over the next few years. I think the Blackhawks, Ducks or Sharks are far more likely to win a cup in the next 10 years than the Blues or Knights. As a Sharks fan, I know for a fact that winning now is basically impossible, whether we tank or not, so I'm fine with not paying as much attention and waiting for homegrown players for me to become attached to.
And it does make for bad hockey, but think about the alternatives. The 2nd playoffs, generally speaking would be won by the teams who just barely missed the playoffs, they'd draft good players, and return to the playoffs, knocking down new teams, and the cycle repeats. The teams who are at the bottom (no matter if they're tanking or not, there will be teams that are the worst in the league), have to just hope they hit on picks later in the draft. The same few teams will be in that 11-16th pick range every year, and do not have the resources, present or future, to compete with the teams that are getting the top picks, and no lure for any free agents looking to win a cup. Now THAT would make for disinterested fans. I actually like the gold standard, because it gives us a reason to keep watching and still rooting for our team. I've been rooting for the Sharks to lose any games not against the Knights for years, and of course I'd like to have some time rooting for my team. It's better than the 2nd playoffs because it creates equity for those bottom teams by giving them more time to rack up points.
Sorry for the word bomb, great video, the fact that I had the passion to write a response like this is rare, and you have intrigued me like few others have in the past. Keep up the great work 😀
Gotta just give every team that missed the playoffs equal odds at the first pick. Tanking becomes pointless then and the lottery itself become more of a spectacle. Really not a hard fix at all imo
For real, I really hate the fact that I have to somewhat cheer for my team to lose to get better odds at the lottery. It feels very wrong and they should definitely try to find better solutions.
Personnally, I feel like the odds are too much in the last team favor. 25,5% odd feels like it's still high enough to be worth tanking. And it goes down all the way to 13,5% for the 2nd last team, almost half the odd. I'd say lower the last team odd to around 17% and make it so it only drop 1% for every other position. This way since the odds would be so similar from a position to another, it really wouldn't be worth it to tank. But, keep the team can't drop 2 or 3 positions rule so the very bad teams can't fall too much. And let's get rid of the teams can't move up more than 10 pick rule, to make it more exciting and random
Here's my lottery idea, feel free to poke holes in it (I'm sure there are plenty)
The up to 16 teams who don't make the playoffs and are eligible (see below) all enter the lottery
Lottery for top 5 picks, the next 11 reverse order from regular season standings
Every franchise has a Lottery Success Rating (LSR), these are points that determine lottery odds
If a franchise makes the playoffs, their LSR stays exactly the same
Picks can be traded (obviously), however their effect on LSR only applies to the original team
For every year a franchise finishes but does not receive any lottery picks – They gain 1 LSR
If they finish in the bottom 12 in the league – They gain an additional 1 LSR (2 total)
If they finish in the bottom 8 in the league – They gain an additional 1 LSR (3 total)
If they finish in the bottom 4 in the league – They gain an additional 1 LSR (4 total)
If a franchise wins the 5th pick – Their LSR resets to just the LSR they would have gained this year alone had they not won the lottery
If a franchise wins the 4th pick – Their LSR resets to 0
If a franchise wins the 3rd pick – Their LSR resets to 0 and they ineligible to enter the lottery or receive LSR the following year
If a franchise wins the 2nd pick – Their LSR resets to 0 and they ineligible to enter the lottery or receive LSR the following 2 years
If a franchise wins the 1st pick – Their LSR resets to 0 and they ineligible to enter the lottery or receive LSR the following 3 years
Similar odds to the current system could be used except teams with the highest LSR has the highest odds as opposed to reverse regular season standings
The tiebreaker for teams on the same LSR is lower position in this years regular season standings
Basically the whole idea is that there's no point in tanking because if you're bad one year, being bad the next year is useless to you
So how would this work? Example LSR values pre-2024 draft lottery, even though picks 4 and 5 (and sometimes 3) weren't lottery picks in the past I'm pretending they were:
1. Rangers 0 LSR – PO
2. Dallas 1 LSR – PO
3. Carolina 0 LSR – PO
4. Winnipeg 2 LSR – PO
5. Florida 3 LSR – PO
6. Vancouver 7 LSR – PO
7. Boston 7 LSR – PO
8. Colorado 0 LSR – PO
9. Edmonton 6 LSR – PO
10. Toronto 1 LSR – PO
11. Nashville 3 LSR – PO
12. Los Angeles 0 LSR – PO
13. Tampa 1 LSR – PO
14. Vegas 1 LSR – PO
15. Islanders 7 LSR – PO
16. Washington *because they made the playoffs 7 LSR – PO
17. St. Louis 6 LSR
18. Detroit 9 LSR
19. Pittsburgh 3 LSR
20. Minnesota 13 LSR
21. Philadelphia 11 LSR
22. Buffalo 0 LSR – INELLIGIBLE FOR 2024
23. New Jersey 0 LSR – INELLIGIBLE FOR 2024
24. Calgary 8 LSR
25. Seattle 3 LSR
26. Ottawa 8 LSR
27. Arizona/Utah 3 LSR
28. Montreal 6 LSR
29. Columbus 0 LSR – INELLIGIBLE FOR 2024
30. Anaheim 0 LSR – INELLIGIBLE FOR 2024 AND 2025
31. Chicago 0 LSR – INELLIGIBLE FOR 2024, 2025 AND 2026
32. San Jose 7 LSR
So Lottery odds would be roughly (very rough, but you get the idea):
Minnesota 24%
Philadelphia 14%
Detroit 12%
Ottawa 10%
Calgary 9%
Montreal 8%
St. Louis 7%
San Jose 6%
Arizona/Utah 5%
Seattle 4%
Pittsburgh 3%
If you want to see my likely error-filled math, here's a spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E58NQSydD4YIilvNFzZpiP7MbPVYrkB0CiFNIbovlYE/edit?usp=sharing
A playoff for the 1st overall pick has a fatal flaw. Why would players who just lost the chance to play for the Stanley Cup put in any effort to play for a guy that will take their job?
Being a bad team doesn’t automatically equal tanking though. Attributing every Cup win with a player drafted high to “tanking” feels like basically accusing those teams of manipulating the system to rebuild their team.
Fantastic argument against tanking can be found with the Senators and Lightning who showed it matters a whole hell of a lot more if you draft smart and have a good scouting department
Tanking isn’t a fix all solution. The Sabres tanked got Eichel and then sucked anyways. A team needs to draft well in the first and the other rounds as well. Some of the best teams have core players from later in the draft. Tampa Bay is a notable example of a team drafting well in the later rounds and getting good players.
Sure that First overall or top three pick can set up the franchise and gain its new leader but how many teams have torn it down only to be stuck in the Lower half for nearly a decade.
Option 4 is a european development squad system where you eliminate the draft and let teams sign kids at 15 and develop them in their systems and kill jr hockey as it is currently played.
I think it should be like in European football where there is no such thing as a "draft lottery" and instead restricting prospects solely to good or bad scouting and keeping only the trade deadline to allow for player movement. That way, deliberately "tanking" to get the number 1 pick doesn't do shit because why would a bright young college prospect want to play for a shitty team?
It's worth noting that, while the Sharks were historically bad, they came into this season with the highlight of their roster being a great group of centers with Hertl on the top line, Couture on the second line, Granlund on the third line, and Sturm on the fourth line. They had zero games with all four of those centers playing. Couture played six games and Hertl played 48 games before going down with an injury and eventually being traded (he came back with 6 games remaining for Vegas, though I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't play those last 6 games if he were in San Jose since maybe he wasn't quite 100% but the games had meaning in Vegas). For a lot of the season the guy they pegged to be their 3C was playing as their 1C and Luke Kunin ended up centering the second line a decent chunk of the season.
Our fans referred to the defense corps as the defense corpse because it was so bad, and that was before Matt Benning who would've been in the discussion for best d-man on the team missed all but 14 games due to injury.
Essentially the team was built to be a bad team and was going to be competing for last place in the league, but then they had the most or second most man games lost to injury in the league (depending on if you count Lehner missing 82 games for Vegas). This led to the historically bad numbers.
It should be the first team out of the playoffs get 1, would get rid of tanking.
The truth is the players don’t tank, the head brass and ownership absolutely tank
I think its time for Bettman to step down.
What a fucking great video. It's a shame the views don't reflect that. Your idea of a Draft pick playoff bracket sounds amazing.
Please don't be discouraged by this videos lack of views, you are one of the only hockey youtubers that makes actually well researched, well produced videos about interesting topics. Not just clickbaity, game-reviewy bullshit like every other hockey youtuber.
Draft pick playoffs sounds like an amazing idea
Best option to tanking I've heard… Great idea
The Wild are one of the in-between teams, a team that (due to cap hell because of the buyouts) are inbetween a first round exit and missing the playoffs, despite a lot of tallent on the roster
With a 1st overall pick tournament, teams in the in-between would stand a much better chance of rising out of purgatory with elite young tallent that would have the environment for them to grow and prosper with less chance of busting
Bias speaking from being a Wild fan, but its a great idea
Fans and players look to build a cup winning team, unfortunately many owners just want to build a competitive team that is fighting to get in the playoffs (enough to keep fans in the building). Consistently bad teams are that way by design, finances, or very poor leadership. Always rebuilding means we’re incompetent.
Last season, I was at the last ANA Ducks game chanting "We want Bedard !", wanting to lose to ensure last spot in the NHL and highest #1 draft odds; this also only occurred because CHI Blackhawks got points in their last 2 games, so you could say Ducks tanked better at the end than the Blackhawks… But we all know what happens next, CHI moves up in the draft and gets Bedard and ANA falls to 2nd. CHI gets another generational talent 1st pick and Ducks still don't have a 1st. Would have been nice if ANA went UP this year but no justice. Will never be able to see Bedard the same after this.
Great video, though I do disagree with the idea that all tanking is inherently bad. The NHL is a business and the decision to trade good players to reset the timeline and be in contention for elite talent is simply asset management. As a fan, I'd much rather watch a handful of bad years and become excited for the draft and free agency rather than watch my team spin their tires for a decade and never get over the hump. Even 3 or 4 top picks doesn't guarantee wins, you need competent ownership, management, and leadership to win.
If we're arguing the "integrity of the sport", I think the NHL gets it right the most of any other major sport in NA. The NFL doesn't have a draft lottery at all, the MLB only has a 6-team lottery, and the NBA is a superstar league where one player can transform a team.
No it doesn't, unless you are Chicago. Signed, Detroit Red Wings fan.
Great video man, well done
I always had this idea that the draft order or the lottery odds should be based on the combined records from previous three seasons. That way tanking would not be possible unless it's your long-term plan, and the team rewarded with the first overall pick would always be the worst in the League.
no other sports have the draft lottery, that's because it's stupid and rigged. Scrap it.
Good video but it isn't that simple. Tanking is more involved than just getting a high draft pick. It has interplay with the cap, drafting, development, injury luck, ect. Here are some of the key things you can't skip over in this discussion.
1st of all you didn't even touch on the reason why the draft exists. The purpose is to maintain parity. The worst teams getting the best players. Anything that disrupts that relationship defeats the purpose.
2nd Drafting isn't the be all end all because drafting is an imperfect skill. You are going to be better or worse at it depending on personnel and even then you're still trying to predict the future. You can't predict injuries or development outcomes.
3rd You have to factor in the cap advantages of ELC's it's a huge reason why having good young players is so valuable. It's the only class of player that is not paid what they are worth. (or more realistically more than what they are worth because of free agent bidding wars).
I like the idea of a bottom-16 playoffs, but I worry about attendance at a lot of these games, especially in markets with less enthusiastic fanbases. maybe it'd work if they shortened the regular season a little, by like 4-8 games or so? we've seen that teams who go deep in the playoffs multiple times in a row have fatigue and injury issues down the line. also, I feel like the series in these playoffs could just be best of 5 instead of 7.
I'd like to see the first round completely random and the following rounds last to first.