There are precedent for Mikko Rantanen taken at 10th and Mattias Ohlund was selected 13th overall by the Canucks. But they are pretty rare occurrences to get such a good player at 10th or 13th in Vancouver's case. Rantanen is a once every 30 years event so safe to say that's not happening again for another 20 years. The Canucks picked Bo Horvat at 9th overall, and while Horvat is a useful NHL player he's not a franchise player or an impact player. He's a guy on an NHL team. A very nice young man. A 25 goal scoring guy. But spearheading a Stanley Cup winner? No. Not even close. A useful 4th line center on a Stanley Cup winner? Probably not because he's a terrible penalty killer. He's a guy in the NHL.
And so given that the odds of getting another Rantanen are extremely low at 10th and because you can't start a Stanley Cup winning team without a franchise player taken at 1st overall and given that the NHL has stacked the lottery to favour teams that don't need the 1st overall pick as much as say a Vancouver Canucks team that has the worst record in the NHL over the last 5 years the current way the Canucks have been doing the NHL draft lottery won't work.
But there is a solution.
And here it is - but it's painful.
Trade the 10th overall pick to a team's 1st Round pick next year - one that you think will do badly in the NHL standings.
In other words - start "opting out" of the NHL draft.
It does a few things.
First - it guarantees that you drop in the standings as there won't be help coming in the pipeline - but that's a good thing.
Second - when you do "strike gold" you'll likely have several picks in the NHL's lottery.
Third - this allows all these young players to arrive at once.
Fourth - eventually you could end up with so many 1st Round picks another team that wins the 1st overall pick will trade that pick for your 6 1st round picks that are 3-25 for example.
Do you follow?
So in year 2 you have 2 ping pong balls in the hopper. Year 3 you have 3 ping pong balls in the hopper, etc. etc. The odds by year 4 of one of the 4 ping pong balls you've acquired winning the lottery go up exponentially. By year 5 it's very difficult not to win.
So what happens is the next year if you go through the lottery with 2 lottery picks next year - and you don't win - you trade both picks for next year's chances and so on and so forth.
So it may take 4 years (25% chance of getting 1st overall spot from the last place or 31st position - soon to be 32nd position). But when you hit - you'll hit with 4 or perhaps 5 draft picks if it takes 5 years.
And because we know the rebuild can't start until the 1st overall pick is complete - and because you know that until then players like Brock Boeser, Bo Horvat, Elias Pettersson and Quinton Hughes are just spinning their wheels until the lead dog arrives - you trade those players, which are useless on a Cup run by themselves, for more chips in the lottery pot.
You go all in, in other words. You put all the chips on the table. You make a statement to the fans - this is going to hurt - we're not getting help in the \NHL draft until we win (however, you can keep your 2nd-7) round picks. But you're just saying any first round pick that isn't 1st overall is a wasted pick and we have to keep going in the lottery pool until we win.
In my book, Hockey Sucks, I offered a fix for this - if you banned teams from getting the 1st overall pick for say 10 years after getting said 1st overall pick - you prevent the ability of say a New Jersey Devils from getting 2 1st overall picks in 3 years which obviously is not fair, especially when you consider that the Vancouver market subsidizes the New Jersey team.
But there will be pain with this option. Ownership will have to say straight up - "We want to win a Stanley Cup - not just make the playoffs and have a twirl - we want the whole thing. And so we're going to suck until we get there."
And so then it would begin.
You start unloading Elias Pettersson, Bo Horvat, Brock Boeser, Quinton Hughes etc. etc. - for 1st Round picks in next year's lottery.
You move the chips to the table.
It is a full-proof system to win that all important chess piece AND to surround that piece with key components that are exactly the same age so they will all "arrive" as stars in the NHL at exactly the same time.
As it stands now - by the time the Canucks get a 1st overall pick - Bo Horvat will be 38 years old and not in the NHL, so it's a waste of time to proceed forward anyways.
You have to have a "lump" of stars arrive at the same time under this cap system and lottery system.
There would be no difference between the 6th overall pick next year and Elias Pettersson next year - you're rolling the dice on who will be better anyways. Pettersson is NOT a franchise player - he may not even be a NHL player. No one knows at this point - his last 30 games were so horrific that no one can say he'll be an NHL player for certain.
This is the correct way to game the system.
Go all in.
Opt out - go in for next year.
And I think it also gives a very loud statement to the NHL - we're going to embarrass the NHL draft lottery system until we win. We're going to go into every NHL building and stink night after night and we're not ashamed about it. We're making a middle finger statement until this is fixed.
And as I also said in my book - you need to start handing out extra 1st round picks in the top 15 to teams who are beyond 30 years + without winning a Stanley Cup. So St. Louis, Buffalo, Vancouver would start getting extra help to win a Stanley Cup and newer franchises wouldn't even be allowed in that Top 15 (bumped out by the people with seniority). Under that system NJ and Edm and NYR and Chi wouldn't even be in the NHL draft lottery.
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