from Bruce McCurdy of the Edmonton Journal,

My favourite sport of all is hockey, so it pains me to say the National Hockey League has tested this ideal in more ways than one. I have railed against the Bettman Point system since it was first announced, on the grounds that it changes the balance between risk and reward and fosters an environment where a particular outcome, a regulation tie, is often in the interests of both teams. A team that wins in overtime or the shootout gets rewarded exactly the same as if they had won in regulation, whereas the loser of that mini-game gets rewarded for their regulation tie. Put another way, a regulation win has been devalued. The very predictable result is that while tie results are no longer possible, there are more tie games than ever before. These days some 25% of all games remain unresolved after 60 minutes, far higher than historical rates when the team that failed to win in regulation forfeited one point while securing one.

Grating as that issue remains, it pales in comparison to a situation where two teams begin a game with opposite objectives: one wants to win, while the other is better served to lose, in regulation if possible. Such is the result of a draft lottery system that rewards teams that miss the playoffs in inverse order of their finish. Worse is better, assuring higher odds of winning the lottery while guaranteeing that a team can only drop one spot from their finish.

Such a system rewards tanking. It’s a concern every year of course, but in 2015 with a high-end draft class that includes “generational” talents in Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel, it has reached epidemic proportions, the worst I can recall since 1984 when Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils engaged in an epic tank battle with the reward being one Mario Lemieux.

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