#GoldRace The nhl, and many other leagues, would be improved by adopting gold drafting, which makes the existing schedule more exciting for fans, eliminates tanking discourse, and gives the best draft picks to the weakest teams, who need them the most. This is the 2024-2025 thread. - ThreadSky

hockeyviz.com • 1 day ago

#GoldRace

The nhl, and many other leagues, would be improved by adopting gold drafting, which makes the existing schedule more exciting for fans, eliminates tanking discourse, and gives the best draft picks to the weakest teams, who need them the most. This is the 2024-2025 thread.

Comments

zachofthenorth.bsky.social•1 day ago

The gold race thread is my groundhog’s day

volunteerpenguin.bsky.social•1 day ago

I like the Gold plan but I'm less enthused about this variant. My big question is who on the team gets to make the decision to "forfeit"? I can see players being very unhappy if they feel like their GM unilaterally made that decision when the players are still trying to make it to the playoffs.

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

Managers have to balance what their players think of all their decisions as it is, that's part of what they get paid to do. I don't mind giving them another difficult choice to make, in fact I like it.

volunteerpenguin.bsky.social•1 day ago

It's a pretty tough sell to players to say "hey we're taking the playoffs entirely out of your hands but please still play hard so we can get a high pick." It's not the players' jobs to worry about the long term success of a team they might not even be on next season.

volunteerpenguin.bsky.social•1 day ago

And yeah I know player motivation is an issue for any Gold plan, but there's a big difference between playing hard after you've been eliminated by on-ice results and playing hard after your GM decided to give up.

volunteerpenguin.bsky.social•1 day ago

Also, at some point a team is going to forfeit and then go on a tear and end up in a playoff spot. So now you've made the playoffs worse by not actually including the best teams. You're potentially eliminating the likelihood of a 2019 Blues happening again.

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

Player motivation is irrelevant, neither the current system nor any system has ever tried to motivate players. They play for money and because they love to win. The 2019 blues were never so low in playoff chance that they'd have switched tracks, team brass would have known that better than anyone.

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

I've written about this idea a number of times, tracking how the draft order might be different in various years. You can read a detailed article about it at http://hockeyviz.com/txt/gold but I answer questions even from rude people who don't. (The #GoldRace hashtag is so you can mute this if you like.)

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

A vital feature of making the #GoldRace scheme work is that teams shouldn't have to wait until they're "mathematically" [sic] eliminated, since that doesn't give the weak teams enough runway to consistently get the best picks. Instead teams can choose to switch tracks, within certain restrictions.

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

(If you insist on elimination by circumstance as the starting point, you still get all of the excitement and the anti-tanking effects, so it's a great idea already, but if you also want the weakest teams to get the best picks, which I do, you need a little more #GoldRace runway.)

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

My primary interest is in making the end of the season more exciting and satisfying for fans, first and foremost, since fan interests are more important than the interests of players, whose interests in turn are more important than those of team owners. But the #GoldRace benefits all three.

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

Some people are squeamish about letting teams declare themselves irrevocably out of a playoff race at the very start of a season, but you can still get a much better system with various different start dates, including the all-star break, which I'm using (again) this year. #GoldRace

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

It's important that, within whatever global restrictions, the teams /themselves/ choose to win for #GoldRace points instead of a playoff spot. That way no team can ever say that they've been treated unfairly, and makes sure that fans can enjoy cheering for wins without any dissonance.

spudrazor.bsky.social•1 day ago

Interesting idea. I’m a Pens fan, and if this was the rule and I was GM I would’ve opted out of the playoffs over the Christmas break. Would that have made sense?

Anyway I’m opting into the Gold plan now and I’ll be watching the numbers.

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

It would have been pretty aggressive then, maybe a small chunk of the fan base would have been pretty mad about it, other parts pretty happy. Would be an interesting thing for a gm to balance.

spudrazor.bsky.social•1 day ago

My take is that squeaking in, the best case scenario for this team, isn’t good enough for Crosby’s team

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

I know lots of pens fans who think like this, and also plenty of fans who feel that every season with Crosby where you can roll the dice on one more run, you should, however chancy. It's that kind of moment in the fandom.

atomic-z.bsky.social•1 day ago

So there'd be a limit to how many teams can enter the Gold Race? What happens if a team taps itself out to enter the Gold Race, then goes on a run and ends up finishing with more points overall than some team that didn't tap out early enough? How many times did you see such a scenario in your models

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

In that circumstance the team would get a great draft pick and not make the playoffs. It definitely happens in simulations but it's not super common; I forget the number.

tw26.bsky.social•1 day ago

The one thing I do like about the current tanking is the firesale trades and letting players walk to go to better teams. Like Okposo going to Florida and winning a cup. I’ve stuck to my idea of just only counting part of the season for draft position- ie the team record prior to the All Star Break

lip1978.bsky.social•1 day ago

Did the PWHL end up using the system last season? How did it go?

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

They did use it last year, I follow lots of pwhl fans and they seemed to enjoy it plenty; was apparently just as exciting as you'd expect.

cobrakai.bsky.social•1 day ago

It isn't a perfect application of it as one two teams missed the playoffs and only was eliminated before the final game.

hockeyviz.com•1 day ago

Yeah the shortage of teams in the pwhl makes it not quite as good - but I think that solves itself naturally as they expand.

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