McDavid, not McDoink.

With such an elite prospect available to the winner of the draft lottery (and a fine silver medal in Jack Eichel), there's going to be a lot of bad hockey on display this year. So let's have a thread to chronicle the NHL's race to the bottom.

The Buffalo Sabres are already running a -10 differential through three games, all of which they've lost. I said they wouldn't be as bad this year as they were last year. I might be wrong. Look at their shots against so far: 37/40, 41/47, 39/44. They never have the puck!

The 0-2 Hurricanes are missing Eric Staal, Jordan Staal, and Jeff Skinner. They're three short of a top six that sucked anyway. They're playing a seventh defenseman at forward and don't even have any good defensemen.

These two teams play each other tomorrow night. Someone has to win. I think. I would almost feel obligated to watch this game but I will be downtown and never happier to be away from the siren song of horrible hockey.

The Jets are a deceptive 1-2 with a -2 because they trucked the Coyotes to open the year, and the roster in and of itself isn't THAT bad, but 50 games against the West are going to eat this team alive. They just lost badly to the Kings, who don't even try until April.

The aforementioned Coyotes are 1-1 with a -3 thus far but have one sorry-ass group of forwards. Their best scorers appear to be Antoine Vermette, a perfectly respectable #2C, and Mikkel Boedker, who is something of a Danish Kris Versteeg. And that's as good as it gets. I think they have three fourth lines. Mike Smith is already up to his antics. I think this team will get McDavid because they're Bettman's problem child.

_________________

So who did Chad LaRose piss off in Raleigh that he was sent to Charlotte? I was shocked to see him Saturday night

I thought they did something to prevent taking in last year or two. Not a lottery but something.

_________________
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

It's some kind of progressive thing now but not a full lottery. I'm not sure if it starts this season or next.

It's a draft lottery where the worst team only has a 20% shot and the 14th has a 1% shot.


He got himself a match penalty for boarding Josh Gorges in a preseason game because Jordan Staal broke a leg trying to tackle Gorges in another preseason game. I can't really explain the Hurricanes. I can only report.

_________________

So torn. Folks say if you can't win, then you should lose for the high pick. If teams don't try to win, then competitive balance is disrupted.

The NHL regular season doesn't matter anyway. What a monumental waste.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

McDavid and Eichel are future franchise players worth tanking for. I think it's better for the league's competitive balance to have a few definite doormats than to have everyone playing to be just good enough to get in the playoffs and maybe make some noise.

Where this gets interesting is that Phoenix and Carolina are both fragile markets that have avoided tanking in favor of this half-in-half-out model. They don't think their respective markets can withstand long-term losing, but somehow floating around 10th place is good for business. I say go for the bottom. It worked for us.

_________________

Yes the Plan. Your endorsement is like gold. Ok NFL starting. I am still hung over from a wedding last night.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

IDK. High draft picks guarantee squat. Look at Edmonton. They should have a lottery that incentivizes trying to win every night. Your comment seems counter to what I think. How is it productive to affect teams A, B and C fighting for top seed when team C is playing team tank on last night of season?

_________________
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Edmonton is a special case brought on by a terrible organization whose only criterion for employment in management is having received a pass from Wayne Gretzky. With hockey scouting having improved by leaps and bounds, a first overall pick can present immediate and significant improvement. Even a bust of a #1 like Erik Johnson still got flipped for pieces that made an elite regular-season team out of the St. Louis Blues, who had finally bottomed out after years of hanging around being good enough. Even #2, #3, #4 in the draft get you great players with few exceptions.

Winning is its own incentive. No one ever went broke winning games -- well, except for the 1992 Pittsburgh Penguins. Bad teams should get the best new players. That's the simplest and fairest way to treat an entry draft. I've never seen a cockamamie proposal for a reverse lottery or play-in mini-tournament that I didn't think was full of shit.

The difference between what the Blackhawks did and The Plan is that the Blackhawks had the luxury of a blank slate between the scorched earth of the local hockey market in Chicago and the depressed hockey market nationwide. It's the difference between buying a fixer-upper and rehabbing it and tearing down a nice house in Hinsdale because you think you can put up an even nicer one. The other difference is that they drafted Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, surefire immediate (or near-immediate) faces of the franchise. The Cubs haven't done that. It's a lot harder to in baseball.

_________________

Are the Panthers in the race to the bottom if no one's there to see it?

_________________

^^^ Wow

_________________
Not a mult.

In the past few years I've seen lots of empty barns in Phoenix, Carolina, Florida, Long Island, Dallas, and Atlanta. I've never seen an NHL game as empty as the one tonight. You could hear each and every sound of a skate or stick. At the end of the game -- a 1-0 loss to Ottawa -- you could hear one guy just shouting "BOOO. BOOOO!!" It was an embarrassment to the league.

The Panthers are embarking upon a new business plan where they don't give deep discounts, they don't do giveaways, they don't do promotions or advertising, and they don't win games. Say what you will about trying to get a good draft pick, but this is a fucking stupid plan.

_________________

The Oilers have given up 22 goals in four games. They must want in. Three #1s weren't enough?

The Hurricanes are 0-2-2. Bad team getting points.

_________________

Hockey is still in trouble. Attendance south of I80 is an issue.

_________________
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Philly
Washington
St. Louis
Denver
LA
San Jose
Anaheim

All south of I-80



I haven't heard lately, but I know that Tampa used to actually do really well attendance-wise. Probably has dropped off, but they are in better shape than Florida.

_________________

Nitpicker.

_________________
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Florida and Phoenix need to find a way to Seattle and Toronto/Hamilton ASAP.

_________________

The hockey line is actually I-64, connecting St. Louis and Richmond, Virginia.

Tampa's attendance is back up again now that the team is good. The new owner has been really good about fostering a hockey atmosphere in the building -- you'd think the mere staging of a hockey game would be enough, but they put in a big theater organ and stuff, too. Meanwhile, Florida is plumbing depths that not even Phoenix and Dallas hit when their teams were in bankruptcy (and by the way, not enough people talk about how Dallas was just as much a bomb scare from 2009-2014 as Phoenix was because oh bluh bluh they had Mike Modano once).

_________________

This is an unfair statement, really.

You'd think the mere staging of a hockey game would be enough in Chicago, Toronto, and Montreal, but they all have their gimmicks.
Lasers, and fast and shit.

_________________

I was just making fun of my clunky usage of "hockey atmosphere" for lack of a better term. The Lightning experience seems to be more Old-Time Hockey than a Panthers game, which seems to be just blasting lots of Pitbull and Rihanna and all that crap. They're basically trying to be the Maple Leafs + Red Wings, right down to the uniforms.

_________________

Is this a compliment or a dis?

Nobody got my "lasers and fast and shit" reference?
Where is bagels?

_________________

I don't like their uniforms. Too derivative. I mean, their old ones sucked, too, but black and blue look good together, come up with something.

_________________

Hurricanes down 4-0 to the Flames with plenty of the third left to go. They'll be the last team to win a game this year. They're so bad that even though Sean Monahan is having a two-goal night, the Flames' color commentator still had to shit on the poor kid by saying Carolina didn't exactly make it hard for him. This team should consider not playing hockey and try to find something that's better suited to their skill set, like maybe selling aluminum siding or professionally walking other people's dogs.

Make that 5-0 Flames.

_________________

Please welcome the Columbus Blue Jackets to the conversation! Yes, now we can fear the likelihood of a generational superstar landing in Whitebread USA.

_________________

1/28:


SportsClubStats had the Sharks at a 68.49% chance of making the playoffs the day I wrote this. Now has them at 23.92% after a huge collapse.

I hope they don't get McDavid.

_________________