New York Rangers: Why tanking is important

The 2018 NHL Entry Draft is crucial to the future of the New York Rangers. The numbers prove how important is it for the Rangers to finish badly.

Leading up to the trade deadline it looked like the New York Rangers were destined to finish among the bottom rung of NHL teams along with Arizona, Buffalo, Ottawa, and Vancouver.  Just after the deadline they actually had the 7th worst record in the league. There was a slight bump in the road when they temporarily jumped into 10th place by winning three of the last four games.  Further improvement could result in an NHL Entry Draft disaster.

Furthermore, the wins in Vancouver and Edmonton were four point games. Instead of the Oilers trailing the Blueshirts by only four points the margin was eight (now six).  The Vancouver win resulted in a nine point difference when a loss would have mean a five point difference with two games in hand.

As wonderful as it has been watching the team actually win some games, for Rangers fans it is imperative that this progress must stop.  It is vital for the team to finish with as bad a record as possible to increase the odds of moving up in the draft lottery. Here’s why:

As much as the  NHL Entry Draft is a crapshoot, there is one way to improve your odds of drafting an impact player.  You must have a pick in the top seven.  While this may seem obvious, when breaking it down by the numbers, the results are pretty startling.

Who are the Elite NHL Player?

To determine who the truly “elite” NHL players currently are, we complied a list made up of the top 20 scorers each year from the 2013-14  campaign through last season.  To balance out the emphasis on scoring, we also added the top five vote-getters for the Selke Trophy for each of the same four years along with the top five vote-getters for the Norris Trohy.

61 skaters made the list. 42 of those players (69%) were first round draft picks.  Only 16 players drafted outside of the first round made the ranks of the NHL’s elite. Three undrafted players (Martin St. Louis, Tyler Johnson and Artemi Panarin) also made the list.

Of the  42 players who were first round picks, how many were drafted in the top seven?  Over 70 percent.  Even more impressive was the fact that 29 of the top 61 players in the league were top seven picks.  While the odds are slim that the Rangers could jump into the top three, here are the players who were picked 5th, 6th or 7th (a position within the Rangers’ reach): Blake Wheeler, Phil Kessel, Mikko Koivu, Jakub Voracek, Ryan Suter and Mark Scheifele.

Late First Round Odds

Mid-to-late first round picks can develop into top notch players.  They include Anze Kopitar (#11), Erik Karlsson (#15),  Vladimir Tarasenko (#16), Claude Giroux (#22) and Evgeny Kuznetsov (#26), but the odds of a late first rounder developing into a stud are nowhere near the those of the top of the class.

We looked at a six year period, from 2005-2010. Teams drafting in the top seven had a 41 percent chance of drafting an elite NHLer with 17  of 42 making the cut.  After the top seven picks, teams had a five percent shot of getting an elite player with only seven skaters out of 128 non-goalies drafted making the list.

That’s not to say you  cannot draft a quality player in later in the first round, but the more picks you have the better.  That’s why stockpiling draft picks is a smart strategy and Jeff Gorton has done an excellent job.  At best, we can hope that of the Rangers’ seven picks in the first three rounds, that three or four make it to the mother ship and make an impact.  All seven would be a spectacular return.

Summary

The Rangers need and an impact player, something that has been sorely lacking for the last 15 years. They’ve tried to acquire that player through trades or free agency (Rick Nash, Marty St. Louis, Marian Gaborik), but the proven way is through the draft.  As counter-intuitive as it may seem, rooting for the Rangers to lose will lead to more success in the future.  Tanking is loathsome, but in today’s NHL it is a necessary evil because when it works, it’s great. Just ask the ultimate tankers, the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Elite

Here’s the list of 29 NHL skaters drafted #1-7  overall who made the “Elite” list:

#1 Picks:
Joe Thornton, Boston
Rick Nash, Columbus
Alex Ovechkin, Washington
Sydney Crosby, Pittsburgh
Patrick Kane, Chicago
Steven Stamkos, Tampa
John Tavares, Islanders
Taylor Hall, Edmonton
Connor McDavid, Edmonton
Auston Matthews, Toronto

#2 Picks:
Patrick Marleau, San Jose
Daniel Sedin, Vancouver
Evgeni Malkin, Pittsburgh
Drew Doughty, Los Angeles
Victor Hedman, Tampa
Tyler Seguin, Boston

#3 Picks:
Henrik Sedin, Vancouver
Jonathan Toews, Chicago
Matt Duchene, Colorado
Leon Draisatil, Edmonton

#4 Picks:
Nicklas Backstrom, Washington
Alex Pietrangelo, St. Louis
Ryan Johansen, Columbus

#5 Picks:
Blake Wheeler, Phoenix
Phil Kessel, Boston

#6 Pick:
Mikko Koivu, Minnesota

Next: Comparing Namestnikov to Miller

#7 Picks:
Ryan Suter, Nashville
Jakub Voracek, Columbus
Mark Scheifele, Winnipeg