Richard brought the notion up that our current system is not 'the best of all possible worlds', and he may be right.
Fortunately, any debate that occurs now for changing the lottery will be for next year.
So here are some thoughts to get this debate rolling;
Currently we use a weighted formula to give the last place team 12 ballots, followed by the 1st place team with 11, and the 2nd with 10 and so on.
This has two effects that are potentially objectionable;
- Teams finishing last have an incentive to finish last as it increases their chances of landing a better lottery pick
- Teams finishing high in the standings will be rewarded for doing so, while teams (aside from the one in last place) that finish low will be punished.
The fact is that these two objections are actually mutually exclusive!
If we are weighting the lottery to reward teams it will presumably be to reward either low finishers (creating an incentive to have your team suck down the stretch) or high finishers (giving to the 'haves' and punishing the 'have-nots').
The only way I can see out of this quandry is to cut the Gordian Knot all together, and go to an unweighted lottery, where everybody has an equal chance to win, and where you finish plays no role in how many ballots you have.
Some will argue that having no punishment for finishing low will encourage teams to 'tank'. I reply; that is what the Herbivore Award was specifically meant to deter.
Some may argue that teams that suck deserve to have some love at the Entry Draft or they risk having horrible FPs forever, and being stuck in a perpetuity of mediocrity as better finishing teams continue to get the better part of the deal.
To which I reply; finishing last will give you an advantage in the one area it should - prospects, but the one place it absolutely shouldn't give you an advantage at the draft table - that would be to reward failure, and punish excellence.
Thoughts?
4 comments:
OK, I'd like to weigh on on this, because I think the way we have things is not ideal.
First of all, I agree that lower finishing teams should get a "boost" for the future to help even the playing field. This is indeed the purpose of the Prospect Draft. The lower you finish, the higher your prospect pick. The only reason why this often fails to translate to improvement for lower ranking teams is that people TRADE these picks rather readily. That is a GM's right, and I don't suggest changing that, but for those who are frustrated at the lack of access to top "stars" need to take a long look at what they've done with their prospect picks. When Cam drafts Tavares 1st overall in the PrD, it is COLLIN's pick he is using - think about that...
As for rewarding finishing higher (to avoid teams tanking at the end, or at least tanking down to no lower than 11th place), the lottery is a good place to do that, but perhaps we go too far.
I suggest we weight the lottery much like we have done, with a small variation and a large change in principle. First, weight the ballots with 2nd place getting 11, 3rd place getting 10, etc down to last place getting 1 (and Predator Cup winner getting none).
Then draw ONCE from that weighted pool for first slot pick overall. That way everyone but the Cup winner has a shot at the first overall slot selection.
Once that is done, choose the remaining 11 slots by random, evenly weighted draw from the remaining 11 teams...
Thoughts?
I dont mind the current way its done giving advantage to high placing teams but i think the weighting is too heavy. The 11th and 10th place team have little chance of having their number called for a decent draft spot. I think we do something similar as is but add more ping pong balls to the equation making the overall weighting less severe than it is currently. We could do something like it is now and then add balls based on points gained over some theoretical baseline graph allowing more balls to be gained by all teams evening out the disparity and allowing something to shoot for...
I'm going to suggest my solution from earlier in the year.
The lowest score at the end of the year (i.e. the herby winner) is given a value of 1 chip.
For every 25 points higher than that a team finishes, they are given an additional chip. (The math is easy, subtract the herby score, divide by 25, ignore the remainder.)
When all this is calculated, the herbivore winner is then given the same number of chips as the pred winner, plus one.
This will, hopefully:
1) Encourage people to avoid getting in a race for the bottom. (if you finish less than 24.99 points from the herby, you get one chip)
2) Encourage people to do well, no matter what, and not toss the season with a bad trade (the better you finish, the better your chips... independently of how others are doing)
3) Would have appropriately awarded Brian, Doug and Dan for finishing as far away from the middling pack as they did.
Those are my thoughts.
Richard
I like Richard's idea... ED slot selection should reward you for doing WELL and not for finishing poorly.
Post a Comment