Hear me out. I think that the NHL regular season could be made more exciting. All too often there are between 6-12 teams that the last 20 games of the regular season mean nothing for, which makes for some boring hockey. Also, I don't think teams should be consistently rewarded for being bad and poorly managed (ie Buffalo or mid 2010 Edmonton). Even more, the worst place to finish is just outside the playoffs (17th-20th) as you don't make playoffs and get a bad draft pick. I know there is the draft lottery, but it is near impossible to make a significant jump, and there is still incentive to tank as you are likely not dropping further than 3rd overall. Why should teams that just miss the playoffs be punished, compared to a team that mails it in in Mid February.

I propose a Knockout Tournament played by all non-playoff teams to determine #1-4 in the NHL Draft order, and then spots 5-16 would follow the old lottery system. Teams are put in a bracket based on their regular season points total (#17 becomes #1 seed). From here, its just a classic bracket tournament, with best of 3 series until we have a winner. The winner gets #1 OA, the loser of the final gets #2OA, and then there is a 3rd place series to determine picks #3 and #4. This means that there is still a potential reward for teams that just miss the playoffs, there is incentive for bad teams to still play well because they know that they have meaningful hockey with this tournament to try to get #1OA. And I believe that this still doesn't harm the really bad teams, because they are still likely to pick between #5-7 even if they get knocked out of the Knockout Tournament. Even if you have to pick between #5-7 for consecutive years, you should be able to get out of it. Teams should not be rewarded for being bad and drafting poorly. And did I mention that this would obviously be more games for fans and more revenue for teams/players. Just imagine non-playoff teams playing for the chance to draft McDavid.

Let's look how this would have played out had it been in effect last year. Here are the points totals for non-playoff teams. We will include Seattle and assume they finish at 50 points for the purpose of this exercise.

Round 1:
#1 - New York Rangers (60 points) vs #16 Buffalo (37 points)
#2 - Dallas (60 points) vs #15 Anaheim (43 points)
#3 - Philadelphia (58 points) vs #14 New Jersey (45 points)
#4 - Calgary (55 points) vs #13 Columbus (48 points)
#5 - Chicago (55 points) vs #12 Detroit (48 points)
#6 - Arizona (54 points) vs #11 San Jose (49 points)
#7 - Ottawa (51 points) vs #10 Los Angeles (49 points)
#8 - Seattle (50 points) vs #9 Vancouver (50 points)

Round 2:
#1 NYR vs #14 New Jersey
#2 Dallas vs #13 Columbus
#5 Chicago vs #11 San Jose
#7 Ottawa vs #8 Seattle

Round 3:
#1 NYR vs #13 Columbus
#5 Chicago vs #7 Ottawa
(Chicago beats NYR in 3rd place game)
Round 4:
Columbus vs Ottawa

The new draft order would be:
1. Ottawa
2. Columbus
3. Chicago
4. New York Rangers
--- Draft lottery for remaining teams (assume no changes)
5. Buffalo
6. Anaheim
7. New Jersey
8. Detroit
9. San Jose
10. Seattle
11. Los Angeles
12. Vancouver
13. Arizona
14. Calgary
15. Philadelphia
16. Dallas



What are your thoughts!

This just keeps the bottom-10 teams (picking 5-15 and not 1-10) in the league in the perpetual bad hockey that BUF has been in. While the top-20 teams stay the same because even the teams that just miss are reloading with top-4 picks every year.

Why do the players even care to play more games if they've been bad all season? What happens when a team has 2 1sts in the non-Playoff picks?

It's an interesting idea, but I just see this turning the league into even more of a "haves" vs "have nots" than it is now. This ends up hurting the cap, because the have nots would get yearly attendance like the Panthers and Yotes because who wants to pay for season tickets to watch bad hockey? Singe game ticket sales dive for the bad teams vs bad teams games too.