Happy Monday morning kids! Hope you all had a great weekend like I did. So, lets get right to it, the NHL draft lottery is a joke right? I mean seriously its a farce.
The entire NHL responded to Edmonton winning the lottery;
Look, I am sure there are plenty of great people in Edmonton. I am sure they are great fans, and the city has some charm. But this isn’t about the city, its about the most ridiculous organization in the NHL winning the first over all pick for the FOURTH TIME IN SIX YEARS!!!!
Did you see McDavid’s face? It was like he showed up for a blind date his buddy fixed him up on, and at the end of dinner he finds out the hot blonde he picked up has herpes! Seriously, it looked this the kid was ready to cry when he was walking down the hall to be interviewed. Talk about an “Oh Shit” moment.
Did Buffalo get screwed by the league? Sure. But the team who really got screwed was Arizona. They get neither McDavid or Eichel. Talk about a hose job.
Lets look at it though. I mean how does one team screw up so much that they get four out of six number one picks? Oh yeah and last year they had the third over all pick. Its a joke, and makes the league look like a joke.
A rebuild does not take a decade. It takes three to five years. The Oilers are the most glaring example of a professional sports team with no plan and no vision to execute a plan.
Want more proof? How about GM Craig McTavish saying this;
“Offense wins hockey games and we’re going to be loaded with it,” MacTavish said, “This is another piece along to that end. It’s so important for our franchise on so many fronts.” Yep, just brilliant.
So what did the 2011 Bruins, 2012 Kings, 2013 Blackhawks and 2014 Kings all have in common? They were all ranked in the top-2 defensively those years they won the Stanley Cup. Ummmmmm yeah. Just a little defense is needed. I don’t recall anyone winning a Stanley Cup by scoring 8 goals a game and giving up 7.
So you got McDavid. What happens when all those other number one picks contracts start coming up for renewal? What happens when you have so many high level picks you cant keep them all under the salary cap? Yep, you sure acquired talent boys, but you have also set yourself up to not be able to keep it.
Oh yeah, and the last thing the Oilers needed was an offensive player. Maybe five or six defensemen and a freaking goalie would help eh boys? You can score five goals a game but if you let in six, you still lose.
So the NHL, and Gary Bettman need to pull their heads out of their asses. The lottery does not work. Its a gimmick. No number one pick has ever resulted in any team winning the Stanley Cup in the next season. Ditch the damn idea.
Finish last, get the first pick. But, you are only eligible to pick first once every five years. And, you can only pick in the top five twice within five years. If you cant begin to turn a team around with two top five picks in the first round every five years, you shouldn’t be running an NHL franchise. Now this doesn’t include trades of course.
Make the lottery, if you are going to keep it, for the entire first round below picks one through five. Why should the Stanley Cup winner have no shot at a top ten pick? Because they were successful? That’s a crock of shit too.
McDavid to Edmonton was the worst case nightmare scenario for the NHL, and McDavid. The poor kid is probably seriously thinking about pulling a Lindros after he said he wouldn’t last week. I mean the odds were 90% against Edmonton getting the top pick again. Those are pretty long odds. But holly crap batman the look on the kids face said it all.
Dead man walking here, dead man walking.
Its time to end this joke called the lottery. Leave it to the NBA where it belongs. The NFL seems to do just fine with their draft. They don’t need a lottery because they know, and we all know that one player can not instantly take the worst team to a championship.
Anywhere else but Edmonton was the talk around all of North America. Well, there ya go. Welcome to the tundra young McDavid where lottery picks go to suffer like the island of misfit toys.
David Wagner – The Angel Of Death – For Those Who Live Stupidly I salute You
*The Death Pool is a mix of comedy, and satire in connection with recent events. It is not an official report of current events although it may look as though the news is so accurate that it could one day happen or may be happening.
