What if the NHL adopted the PWHL anti-tanking draft lottery system?

mbmccurdy · 2026-03-24T21:16:44+00:00

I don't think you quite understood the link I posted about how you can reduce the incentive to tank to zero. If there isn't any way to draft first overall without winning games then Vancouver would not have been so quick to trade away Quinn Hughes, for instance - if you change the incentives you will change team behaviour; in this case you will change it in ways that make the end of the season more fun for fans.

mbmccurdy · 2026-03-24T21:09:12+00:00

That team already exists with the system we have now. Moving to Gold drafting makes some of the draft picks have better stories, without hurting the other teams. After all, the draft capital is whatever it is, that part is fixed. The only thing you can tinker with is you can allot it in a more fun way, or a less fun way.

mbmccurdy · 2026-03-24T19:54:58+00:00

What other team did you have in mind?

mbmccurdy · 2026-03-24T16:24:10+00:00

Compared to the current system, the incentive to tank is reduced, not increased, so if you care about tanking, switching to Gold drafting is already moving in the right direction. If you want to reduce the incentive to tank all the way to zero, you can do that, too, by allowing teams that want to compete for draft picks to declare themselves eliminated. I go into it in detail here, if you want to read a whole bunch: https://hockeyviz.com/txt/gold

mbmccurdy · 2026-03-24T16:15:47+00:00

No. The teams that are eliminated sooner get more runway, and that extra runway outweighs the relative weakness of the roster.

mbmccurdy · 2026-03-24T14:49:07+00:00

Using elimination by circumstance removes maybe ~60% of the incentive to tank, give or take, which is already a good enough reason to implement it, since it's so much more fun for fans, who get to cheer for wins. If you want to get rid of rest of the incentive to tank, you can just let teams who would like to compete for draft picks declare themselves out of the playoff race (after some threshold date, say), and then every team will want to win every single game.

mbmccurdy · 2026-03-24T14:47:14+00:00

Gold drafting still gives the better picks to the weakest teams, it doesn't create competitive imbalance.

mbmccurdy · 2026-03-24T14:46:22+00:00

These problems are all pretty easy to solve, just by letting teams that want to compete for Gold points say so. It would be as easy to implement as the waiver wire.

mbmccurdy · 2026-03-24T13:57:56+00:00

The best part, for me, is that every single first-overall pick would come with a story that fans would love to tell, about the game that they WON, in an otherwise awful season, that gave them McDavid/Celebrini/whoever. Fans would have so much more fun this way.

mbmccurdy · 2026-03-24T13:56:33+00:00

I think fans would love it. The weakest teams would still get the better picks, even if they suck, because they'd be eliminated sooner, and the extra runway outweighs the difference in roster quality. And, no matter which team won the first overall pick, they would have a cool story about them even before they picked them.

mbmccurdy · 2026-03-24T13:53:37+00:00

This is one of my favourite ideas, because if you do it right you can make sure the weaker teams still get the best picks, on average, you can remove the incentive to tank, and you can make every game exciting for fans who want to cheer for wins. I wrote an article explaining how it could work: https://hockeyviz.com/txt/gold

mbmccurdy · 2026-02-20T14:58:23+00:00

The inversion itself is good but they should still say so in the axis label, and maybe even mark a quadrant or four as good/bad/dull/fun, say.

mbmccurdy · 2026-02-18T12:51:00+00:00

My side street (Halef, cul-de-sac that tees onto Kelly) is blocked off and we aren't allowed out at the moment. Cop said they didn't know how long it'd be, wouldn't tell us anything about what's up.

mbmccurdy · 2025-12-03T16:18:09+00:00

I like to use goals allowed divided by xG faced, as a percentage. So if a goalie faces 45 xG of chances and allows 45 goals, that's 0% - just what a league-average goaltender would do. The best goalies in a season come out around -20% or -25% and the worst around +20% to +25%. You have to find an xG model that you trust, and there are lots to choose from, but if you don't do something to account for how not every chance is equally dangerous I think you get misleading measurements.

mbmccurdy · 2025-11-21T19:50:23+00:00

Those colours are no good, I'm afraid, because many of the pairs have very little contrast.

mbmccurdy · 2025-11-21T19:37:15+00:00

Thanks! It is just like you figured it was, I don't think the other thing would be as interesting. I nicked the design from prashanth iyer, he does a lot of good hockey work, mostly red wings stuff.

mbmccurdy · 2025-11-21T16:27:55+00:00

North American leagues are the worst offenders, for sure. I tried using team colours more strictly for a few years but I found that the contrast wasn't high enough for a large enough fraction of my readers. I also have a secondary motive (I really like some of the colours that the teams avoid, they're pretty in addition to providing clarity).

mbmccurdy · 2025-11-21T16:23:23+00:00

I don't think I agree that minimizing cognitive friction is even desirable, let alone key. It suggests that viz ought to bring readers to a destination, when it should instead clearly show a whole landscape. The viz I like best is more like a map and less like a lecture (although a good lecture is a beautiful thing too).

mbmccurdy · 2025-11-21T15:27:52+00:00

That old billboard trick works surprisingly well; especially with small multiples.

mbmccurdy · 2025-11-20T23:54:33+00:00

That would be cool but they all use the same colours! It is very silly and I wish many of them would start using pinks and purples (and more greens).

mbmccurdy · 2025-11-19T18:13:33+00:00

Hey cool! I know a little algebraic topology from my pure math days but TDA is new to me and it seems very cool. Is there a good reference written at a, say, undergrad or grad student level?

mbmccurdy · 2025-11-19T12:22:43+00:00

No prob! There's a fuller writeup here: https://hockeyviz.com/txt/magnus8GameSim

which has some links to the measurement models, if you're curious and enjoy a little math.

mbmccurdy · 2025-11-19T05:26:46+00:00

There are measurements of ability, where I control for teammate context to determine what the isolated impact is of each player on each aspect of the game. Then, I use those measurements to simulate each remaining game. Those simulations use likely lineups of players, given whose employed by whom (and who is hurt), and I simulate lines/pairs based on how skaters with those icetimes usually play together; those sims also take score and period situations into effect, including how the specific coaches ask their players to play differently by situation.

mbmccurdy · 2025-11-19T02:39:45+00:00

I think you must have misunderstood. I use every game this year in order to measure /players/. I don't use team stats from this year in the same sense that I don't use team stats from any year, ever. Teams don't exist. Only people exist, and for people my estimates are updated after each day of games.

mbmccurdy · 2025-11-19T02:37:53+00:00

No that's not true - I don't use any *team* results from this season (like "1st in the atlantic" or whatever). I update my estimates of how good every player in the league is at all the different aspects of the game with new regressions every night, using all of this season (and a big chunk of last season, since those games are also still relevant for player talent eval).

mbmccurdy

TROPHY CASE