Although we would all be heartbroken, I don't believe anyone who reads this would be surprised if we had no NHL season this year. I, for one, am already starting to look at the draft and I don't think the lottery system from 2005 is as fair as it seems. It does not give enough of an advantage to teams that miss the playoffs AND do not receive very high picks. I took it upon myself to come up with a ranking system that would be fair and wouldn't leave too much up to chance.

For this ranking system, I have taken data from the draft rankings of the past 4 years. In each year, the 14 teams that did not make the playoffs are placed at the top of the ranking from 14 to 1, the team with the highest pick in the draft of the 14 at the top. With the other 16, they are placed in order from 16 to 30. Then they are asigned a point value of between 30 for the team at the top of the list and 1 for the team at the bottom of the list.

From this points system, I have added the totals from the past 4 years and the rankings would look like this

Dallas 110

Minnesota 102

Calgary 99

Winnipeg 92

Toronto 87

Ottawa 80

Buffalo 80

New York Islanders 79

Carolina 79

Colorado 78

Anaheim 77

Columbus 77

St. Louis 77

Edmonton 77

Florida 76

Tampa Bay 70

Nashville 60

New York Rangers 59

Montreal 50

Phoenix 46

Los Angeles 46

New Jersey 37

Washington 32

Boston 32

Detroit 31

Chicago 30

Philadelphia 29

Pittsburgh 29

San Jose 25

Vancouver 22

You will notice that there were several ties, and here I will discuss the tie breakers I employed

#1 The amount of Stanley cups. If two teams are tied, the one who has more Stanley cups in those 4 years will pick later

#2 The amount of #1 overall picks. If two teams are tied the team with the most #1 overall picks will pick later

#3 Playoff Appearances. The team with the fewer playoff appearances will pick first

#4 The team in those 4 years who has received the highest pick in the draft will pick later

For instance, you will notice that 4 teams have received 77 points. None of the 4 teams had won a Stanley Cup so we moved on to tie breaker #2 which put edmonton on the bottom of the pile. Of the 3 remaining, St louis had the most playoff appearances so they were placed just above edmonton and then of Columbus and Anaheim, Columbus had recieved the highest pick with their #2 overall last year beating any of anaheims picks over the past 4 years.

I know Dallas fans would be happy to see Big D on the top of this board, but what do you think about the model? Is it fair?