On Failing (For Nail or Whoever)

[Jim Bauch]

I've done a version of this before, but this is a little more
extensive. I looked at the history of teams who won the Cup, and of
teams having top 5 overall draft selections.

Here are your post-lockout Cup winners, and their results in the
previous 10 seasons, by points and playoff round reached:

Boston (2011):
91 (2nd round)
116 (2nd round)
94 (1st round)
76 (n/a)
74 (n/a)
104 (1st round)
87 (1st round)
101 (1st round)
88 (n/a)
73 (n/a)

Top 5 draft picks during last 10 years: Seguin (2011) (pick via
trade), Kessel (2006)

Comments: Certainly some non-playoff years in that mix, but not
really a paradigmatic "tank and draft high" success story, either. Of
those 2 top 5 selections, one was traded to get the pick that resulted
in the second (so it's really more like 1 top 5 player), and Seguin
played a contributing but hardly major role in the victory.


Chicago (2010):
104 (3rd round)
88 (n/a)
71 (n/a)
65 (n/a)
59 (n/a)
79 (n/a)
96 (1st round)
71 (n/a)
78 (n/a)
70 (n/a)

Top 5 draft picks during last 10 years: P. Kane (2007), Toews (2006),
Barker (2004)

Comments: Somewhat fits the model, in that they had three top 5 picks
who played a role in the Cup. Note, though, that they had a LOT of
crappy years. It took a lot of failing.

Pittsburgh (2009):
102 (4th round)
105 (1st round)
58 (n/a)
58 (n/a)
65 (n/a)
69 (n/a)
96 (3rd round)
88 (2nd round)
90 (2nd round)
98 (1st round)

Top 5 draft picks during last 10 years: J. Staal (2006), Crosby
(2005), Malkin (2004), Fleury (2003), Whitney (2002)

Comments: Indisputably the paradigm case. Went through four lousy
years, came out of them with four key components, and used them to win
a Cup.

Detroit (2008):
113 (3rd round)
124 (1st round)
109 (2nd round)
110 (1st round)
116 (Cup)
111 (1st round)
108 (2nd round)
93 (2nd round)
103 (Cup)
94 (Cup)

Top 5 draft picks during last 10 years: None

Comments: The antithesis. Won four Cups in an 11-year span, long
enough to essentially turn over the entire roster, and never missed
the playoffs once.

Anaheim (2007):
98 (3rd round)
76 (n/a)
95 (4th round)
69 (n/a)
66 (n/a)
83 (n/a)
83 (1st round)
65 (n/a)
85 (2nd round)
78 (n/a)

Top 5 draft picks during last 10 years: Ryan (2005), Chistov (2001),
Vishnevski (1998)

Comments: Fuzzy case. Lots of years of failure (not surprising for
an expansion team), and only Ryan was even on the Cup-winning team.
(Chistov was traded to Boston for a 3rd round pick in the '08 draft;
Vishnevski was traded to Atlanta for Karl Stewart and a 2nd rounder.)

Carolina (2006):
76 (n/a)
61 (n/a)
91 (4th round)
88 (1st round)
84 (n/a)
86 (1st round)
74 (n/a)
75 (n/a)
77 (n/a)
43 (lockout-shortened season) (n/a)

Top 5 draft picks during last 10 years: E. Staal (2003), Ladd (2004),
J. Johnson (2005)

Comments: Another fuzzy case. Staal and Ladd were part of the Cup-
winning team, but Johnson wasn't.

Well, so far that looks like failing isn't a bad strategy, as 5 out of
6 Cup-winners had at least one recent top 5 selection. But we have to
look at the other side of it, too, which is: how many teams that
"failed" achieved success?

Total top 5 picks since 1995 (Cups since 1995)

NYI 10 (0),
ATL 6 (0),
LAK 5 (0), FLA 5 (0), TBL 5 (1*), PIT 5 (1),
WAS 4 (0), CBJ 4 (0), ANA 4 (1),
BOS 3 (1), CHI 3 (1), SJS 3 (0), CAR 3 (1), OTT 3 (0), VAN 3 (0)
EDM 2 (0), COL 2 (2**), STL 2 (0), PHL 2 (0), PHX 2 (0), MIN 2 (0)
TOR (0), NJD (2), NAS (0), MTL (0), BUF (0), NYR (0), DAL (1)
None: DET (4), CGY (0)
(note that in the case of trades, I went by who actually made the
pick, not its original owner. A somewhat arbitrary choice, but I
figured that trading good players to acquire a top-5 pick is more
consistent with the Fail for Success strategy we're testing than is
finishing in the bottom-5 but trading your pick away.)
*-2 of the 5 picks were post-Cup
**-2 of the 2 picks were post-Cup

Now it doesn't look so good. Cup-winners seem just as likely to come
from the bottom of that list (DET, NJD, DAL) as from the top. And for
every Chicago or Pittsburgh that has turned periods of failure into a
championship, there's an Atlanta or Islanders squad that hasn't.

At the risk of stating the obvious: it really comes down to
management. Cups are won more through good scouting and development
that transform non-top-5 picks into useful/good/great players, and
good personnel and cap management than through taking the "can't miss"
Top 5 guys (many of whom do, in fact, miss).

Anyway, I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to flog a strawman
here. I understand that the "Fail for Nail" folks don't really claim
it's as simple as "stink for a year or three, get a couple of
superstar, plan parade." But I think that it's still being
underestimated just how unreliable Failing really is as a strategy.

Jim

P.S. I didn't end up using it in this post, but in case anyone wants
to play with it, I compiled this list of Top 5 selections.

Top 5 draftee by year:
2011: Nugent-Hopkins (EDM), Landeskog (COL), Huberdeau (FLA), Larsson
(NJD), Strome (NYI)
2010: Hall (EDM), Seguin (BOS via TOR), Gudbranson (FLA), Johansen
(CBJ), Niederreiter (NYI)
2009: Tavares (NYI), Hedman (TBL), Duchene (COL), E. Kane (ATL), B.
Schenn (LA)
2008: Stamkos (TBL), Doughty (LAK), Bogosian (ATL), Pietrangelo
(STL), L. Schenn (TOR via NYI)
2007: P. Kane (CHI), van Riemsdyk (PHL), Turris (PHX), Hickey (LAK),
Alzner (WAS)
2006: E. Johnson (STL), J. Staal (PIT), Toews (CHI), Backstrom (WAS),
Kessel (BOS)
2005: Crosby (PIT), Ryan (ANA), J. Johnson (CAR), Pouliot (MIN),
Price (MTL)
2004: Ovechkin (WAS), Malkin (PIT), Barker (CHI), Ladd (CAR), Wheeler
(PHX)
2003: Fleury (PIT via FLA), E. Staal (CAR), Horton (FLA via PIT),
Zherdev (CBJ), Vanek (BUF)
2002: Nash (CBJ), Lehtonen (ATL), Bouwmeester (FLA), Pitkanen (PHL),
Whitney (PIT)
2001: Kovalchuk (ATL), Spezza (OTT via NYI), Svitov (TBL), Weiss
(FLA), Chistov (ANA)
2000: DiPietro (NYI), Heatley (ATL), Gaborik (MIN), Klesla (CBJ),
Torres (NYI via TBL)
1999: Stefan (ATL), D. Sedin (VAN), H. Sedin (VAN), Brendl (NYR via
CHI), Connolly (NYI)
1998: Lecavalier (TBL via FLA), Legwand (NAS via TB), Stuart (SJ via
NAS), B. Allen (VAN), Vishnevski (ANA)
1997: Thornton (BOS), Marleau (SJ), Jokinen (LAK), Luongo (NYI via
TOR), Brewer (NYI)
1996: Phillips (OTT), Zyuzin (SJ), Dumont (NYI), Volchkov (WAS),
Jackman (DAL)
1995: Berard (OTT), Redden (NYI), Berg (LAK), Kilger (ANA), Langkow
(TBL)

[A.J. Bassett]

Wow. Good lot of time and research went into compiling that - very
impressive. And while one could cherry pick the case models
(Pittsburgh and Chicago), there are many more that are, as mentioned,
pretty fuzzy, or in the case of Detroit, totally absolved.

And those are just the winners. How many "tank and tank" clubs could
one find? Quite a few more, I'll bet.

I think that post clinches the deal - it's folly to take a dive in
hopes of rising to the surface. Only with exception, it appears to be
more or less a dead-end road.

A.J.

[Mike]

Let me go on record as saying, I'm not in the tank club but what I am
in is the rebuild club and that rebuild club means casting away pieces
that are not working. Gomez, Cammalleri and Gionta are 3 prime suspects
in the not working club. We then should analyze other aspects of the
team (e.g. Kostitsyn) and determine if they should be part of the club
moving forward. Once those moves are made the team will find itself in a
reset position to make new moves. They'll have draft picks to employ
from trades involving Gionta and Cammy and they'll have their own frst
round pick which could conceivably be a very high pick. They'll also
have $$ to spend on the UFA or trade market to try and finally land a
center with size that can help the team move ahead. If you then look 3
or 4 years down the road and see Beaulieu and Tinordi joining PK and
Emelin plus 2-3 years of high picks then you can see a bright future for
this team.

The one thing the team cannot do is maintain the status quo. You say
that its folly to tank, you may be right you may not be right - it all
depends on what tanking gets you. But the one thing I can say is that
the plan they've been following for almost 20 years (middle of the road
results and middle of the road picks and trades) has been an abject
failure. You can point to the last 19 years results as proof.

The team must move on from the current lineup and must make changes that
fans will have to suffer through. A rebuild is a necessity because the
core is not good enough to tweak.

[Gerry]

On Dec 21, 12:13 pm, Mike <m...@gmail.com> wrote:
> But the one thing I can say is that
> the plan they've been following for almost 20 years (middle of the road
> results and middle of the road picks and trades) has been an abject
> failure. You can point to the last 19 years results as proof.

Again, it's folly to think that that was "the plan". That was the
*outcome*. Of a series of plans. Formulated and executed under a
variety of different regimes. Every team plans to win. Every team
tries to get the players and execute the moves that will get them
there. Every team ends up with a different result. Some teams end up
really sucking for many years... far far worse than the Habs have.
Some get the big prize. The Habs, by contrast, have stayed pretty
much in the middle. Not by design. But because that's just the way
it worked out.

> The team must move on from the current lineup and must make changes that
> fans will have to suffer through. A rebuild is a necessity because the
> core is not good enough to tweak.

It was good enough two years ago. A couple of major players fell off
the map as of last season (Gomez and Markov), but several others have
since arisen into prominence (Cole, Pacioretty, Subban, Price) to
replace them. It could still have been a net improvement, leaving us
again some minor tweaks away from the necessary upwards and onwards
progression. Except... *thus far* (a mere 30 games in!) a couple more
major players have fallen off the map again this season (Gionta and
Cammalleri), and last year's desired tweaks simply were never made
(extra quality d-man, no 4th line).

But it's just 30 games in. And Gionta and Cammalleri have ample time
and ability to rebound. Past that, Markov *should* be back too. Who
knows anymore with Gomez. But it's simply not a closed case that this
team is irreparably off the course of progression from where it was
the last 2 seasons. You're making the mistake of letting 19 years
taint what should really only be a 2.4 year perspective. You have to
let go of those other 17 years, they are now irrelevant.

l8r,
Gerry