NHL Anti-Thread: Bad Business Decision Aggregator

[Luigi74]

On 3/19/2023 at 9:24 AM, BBTV said:

 

You're not wrong, but here's two exceptions.  Top pics that were by-in-large the catalysts for two separate elite eras.

 

Why would the NHL rig the Crosby lottery for the Penguins? The Rangers also had three balls in the pot and the Kings, Blackhawks and Ducks each had two, if they were going to rig it one of the big market teams would have won. 

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, Luigi74 said:

Why would the NHL rig the Crosby lottery for the Penguins? The Rangers also had three balls in the pot and the Kings, Blackhawks and Ducks each had two, if they were going to rig it one of the big market teams would have won. 

 

I didn't suggest it was rigged.

[Cosmic]

1 hour ago, Luigi74 said:

Why would the NHL rig the Crosby lottery for the Penguins? The Rangers also had three balls in the pot and the Kings, Blackhawks and Ducks each had two, if they were going to rig it one of the big market teams would have won. 

Not that I believe it was rigged, but the Penguins were in serious trouble at the time... old arena, low attendance, poor performance. They were possibly a relocation candidate.

[mcj882000]

On 3/18/2023 at 5:21 PM, the admiral said:

I honestly don't think the NHL draft lottery is rigged. I do think the NBA draft lottery is totally rigged. I will not be taking further questions at this time.

Counterpoint: if the NBA was rigging draft lotteries then MJ's Bobcats/Hornets would have won one by now.

[BrySmalls]

1 hour ago, mcj882000 said:

Counterpoint: if the NBA was rigging draft lotteries then MJ's Bobcats/Hornets would have won one by now.

Maybe they win it this season once MJ sells his stake in them.

Also, many people say the 1985 NBA lottery was rigged. How else did the Knicks end up with Patrick Ewing?

[BBTV]

On 3/19/2023 at 12:38 AM, who do you think said:

how little impact a top player has compared to the NBA

 

To clear it up, my post was in resopnse to this, not the rigging part.  IIRC, the Pens completely and unashamedly tanked for Lemieux , which was a decade before the lottery existed.  I don't recall the exact circumstances behind Crosby, but that's more plausible given the turmoil facing the franchise.  Still don't think it was rigged - too many people involved.

 

Regarding the NBA lottery, I found this, which I don't undersatnd:

Fourteen ping-pong balls numbered 1 through 14 will be placed in a lottery machine. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard to their order of selection. Before the lottery, 1,000 of those 1,001 combinations will be assigned to the 14 participating lottery teams. The lottery machine is manufactured by the Smart Play Company, a leading manufacturer of state lottery machines throughout the United States. Smart Play also weighs, measures and certifies the ping-pong balls before the drawing.

 

How does this address the weighting that the bad teams get?  I had assumed that teams got an unequal number of balls, and that' show their odds were determined.  I'm not sure how this numbering system works if there's only one team per ball.

[The_Admiral]

There's a giant list of outcomes and they're unevenly assigned to teams. 1 of the 1,001 is literally "pick again." If everyone is gonna think it's rigged no matter what they do, at least they could do it with a little more pizzazz than consulting a list to see which team "7 9 4 13" corresponds to.

[BBTV]

So the balls aren't for the teams?  They're literally just numbered 1-14?  So out of the 1001, the worst team would own a disproportionate amount of those numbers that say 'pick 1', and then a few more that say 'pic 2', etc.  While some combination would say that the best of the lottery teams would pick top 3, but it would only be like one of the 1001 combinations?

 

If that's the case, then they don't really need 14 balls if  they aren't really tied to specific teams.  Unless 14 is the number it takes to get enough combinations to allow them to do the exact weighting their trying to do.

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, BBTV said:

So the balls aren't for the teams?  They're literally just numbered 1-14?  So out of the 1001, the worst team would own a disproportionate amount of those numbers that say 'pick 1', and then a few more that say 'pic 2', etc.  While some combination would say that the best of the lottery teams would pick top 3, but it would only be like one of the 1001 combinations?

 

Yep: https://online-calculator.org/14-combination-4

 

So on this list, the Spurs would have 1-2-3-4, which is also 1-3-2-4 or 4-3-1-2, etc., then all permutations of 1-2-3-5, and so on down the line for like I think 250 of these. I'm pretty sure the NHL runs it the same way. And again, I say this is too opaque and not much fun. There's gotta be a way to get more spectacle than this in both leagues.

 

I think I remember coming up with some system that was based on distance from the worst playoff record but it didn't go over well.

[Sport]

The Ewing lottery is hilariously quaint. That was the first ever draft lottery and their design of the lottery seems perfectly tailored to be riggable. They dumped like ten enormous envelopes into this big clear plastic drum, which is cranked by this old bald dude and then Stern sticks his hand in and without looking fishes for the cold one. I’m not saying it was rigged, but if they were trying to rig it, the setup wouldn’t have looked any different. 

 

I don’t get why they use the numbering system, though, and not just put 100 balls in the hopper with each team’s logo on them and give the worst teams more balls? So the Blue Jackets this year would have 25 of the 100 balls, the Sharks would have 13, etc. Then you could do the drawing on live TV like the state lotteries do and make it a better show than Bill Daly turning cards over and it would more visibly transparent. People say it’s rigged because we can’t see how the results were collected. 

[Sec19Row53]

13 minutes ago, Sport said:

The Ewing lottery is hilariously quaint. That was the first ever draft lottery and their design of the lottery seems perfectly tailored to be riggable. They dumped like ten enormous envelopes into this big clear plastic drum, which is cranked by this old bald dude and then Stern sticks his hand in and without looking fishes for the cold one. I’m not saying it was rigged, but if they were trying to rig it, the setup wouldn’t have looked any different. 

 

I don’t get why they use the numbering system, though, and not just put 100 balls in the hopper with each team’s logo on them and give the worst teams more balls? So the Blue Jackets this year would have 25 of the 100 balls, the Sharks would have 13, etc. Then you could do the drawing on live TV like the state lotteries do and make it a better show than Bill Daly turning cards over and it would more visibly transparent. People say it’s rigged because we can’t see how the results were collected. 

Alternatively, people say it's rigged because they don't understand how it works.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

The other thing is it's not like the Knicks won :censored: with Ewing anyway.

[who do you think]

9 hours ago, mcj882000 said:

Counterpoint: if the NBA was rigging draft lotteries then MJ's Bobcats/Hornets would have won one by now.

 

Why is that? Charlotte is a footprint franchise in a transplant haven that cares way more about college ball; their lot in life is Monday and Wednesday night schedule filler for the marquee teams. Don't say Jordan, the NBA owes him nothing as an owner.

 

1 hour ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

The other thing is it's not like the Knicks won :censored: with Ewing anyway.

 

Ewing was expected to be the great center of his time but oops bad knees.

[BBTV]

8 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

Yep: https://online-calculator.org/14-combination-4

 

So on this list, the Spurs would have 1-2-3-4, which is also 1-3-2-4 or 4-3-1-2, etc., then all permutations of 1-2-3-5, and so on down the line for like I think 250 of these. I'm pretty sure the NHL runs it the same way. And again, I say this is too opaque and not much fun. There's gotta be a way to get more spectacle than this in both leagues.

 

I think I remember coming up with some system that was based on distance from the worst playoff record but it didn't go over well.

 

IMO the best system is in order of when they're eliminated from playoff contention.  Then eve if they're tanking, they can play hard for the rest of the season (and it's unlikely that a fringe team would tank from day one rather than once they've seen that they're season has gone sideways.)

 

7 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Alternatively, people say it's rigged because they don't understand how it works.

 

And because it's all apocryphal since they don't actually show that it's happening.  I'm not one of the ones that thinks it's rigged, but it's reasonable to distrust anything that's done in secret behind closed doors.

[IceCap]

This is the jersey equivalent of putting the league on OLN 

 

 

[Digby]

9 hours ago, Sport said:

 

The Ewing lottery is hilariously quaint. That was the first ever draft lottery and their design of the lottery seems perfectly tailored to be riggable. They dumped like ten enormous envelopes into this big clear plastic drum, which is cranked by this old bald dude and then Stern sticks his hand in and without looking fishes for the cold one. I’m not saying it was rigged, but if they were trying to rig it, the setup wouldn’t have looked any different. 

 

I don’t get why they use the numbering system, though, and not just put 100 balls in the hopper with each team’s logo on them and give the worst teams more balls?

 

Because then in all likelihood you’d pull a Blue Jackets ball like 4 more times after you already pulled the first one, no? I guess you could just say “they’re already on the list so discard” if it’s behind the scenes but that would get tedious as a TV spectacle. 

 

Probability math stuff gets heady quickly. The current NBA/NHL method with the assigned number sequences makes sense in theory but it could well be the nerds pulling one over on me. I remember taking stats in college thinking it would be like sabermetric stats and… it was not.

[Sport]

1 hour ago, IceCap said:

This is the jersey equivalent of putting the league on OLN 

 

 

 

Terrible news. The only good part about that is it means the old authentics will be on sale? Because of past experiences with Fanatics I refuse to buy anything from them so I guess I just won't buy a new jersey for a while. 

 

 

1 minute ago, Digby said:

Because then in all likelihood you’d pull a Blue Jackets ball like 4 more times after you already pulled the first one, no? I guess you could just say “they’re already on the list so discard” if it’s behind the scenes but that would get tedious as a TV spectacle. 

 

I think that might add fun tension to the broadcast. Or they figure out a way to quickly clean the bucket of the balls for a team who's already been picked? All I know is to avoid any question that this is a fair drawing it has to be analog and visible. 

 

 

1 minute ago, Digby said:

Probability math stuff gets heady quickly. The current NBA/NHL method with the assigned number sequences makes sense in theory but it could well be the nerds pulling one over on me. I remember taking stats in college thinking it would be like sabermetric stats and… it was not.

 

I escaped stats with a C- and was happy with that grade so I'm also not the guy to talk to about this stuff. The assigned numbers make sense, but doesn't make for compelling TV. Also it happens behind closed doors. I want this thing done out in the open. 

[Digby]

I'm a little surprised the NBA didn't find a way to do it on the blockchain (no I don't know or care if that means anything) sponsored by a crypto exchange, only for said sponsorship to crumble and the randomness revealed to be three cats swatting catnip balls around a room.

[Cosmic]

8 hours ago, BBTV said:

IMO the best system is in order of when they're eliminated from playoff contention.  Then eve if they're tanking, they can play hard for the rest of the season (and it's unlikely that a fringe team would tank from day one rather than once they've seen that they're season has gone sideways.)

The one I've heard that interests me the most would work off of points earned after you were eliminated from playoff contention, either straight up or assigning percentages. So you can tank and build a team that gets 50 points in 82 games, but you have to actually win some games at some point to get good odds at #1 overall.

[Marcos Flamengo]

Since the NHL to Houston's Twitter account bet Atlanta and Houston would become NHL's 33rd and 34th NHL franchise, I bet Quebec and Portland would become NHL's 35th and 36th franchises.