I was thinking about the fan base and ownership quality of the final teams. I’m pretty much always going to support and favor the team with more history and have better fans. When it comes to quality of fans, I think in the National Hockey League fan bases must be evaluated relatively. For example, you can’t say St. Louis has a poor fan base because they don’t sell out every game. The fact is, hockey isn’t a tremendously popular sport and even the best fan bases don’t sell out every game. I believe St. Louis is a pretty good hockey city that supports the Blues despite being saturated with quite a few below average players recently.
In sports, fans are allowed to love and hate certain players, teams, and cities. It’s baseless and meaningless in real life but in the realm of sports, it’s different. As fans, we take offense when someone harms or disrespects a representative of our city. It’s never personal; it’s just the nature of sports and part of being a fan.
After having said all that, I don’t really want to see the Penguins win the Stanley Cup this year not because I have a particular distaste for the city, the fans, or the team, but for some very different reasons than people would otherwise think. Honestly, I respect the fans of Pittsburgh. They’re passionate and committed. My problem with the Penguins has more to do with the organization.
Before I get into the Penguins organization, I’m going to quickly mention something though. At the moment, the Penguins have two of the league’s most talented players in Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. I’m not going to get into the reasons, but I really like both of those players on a purely talent level. I appreciate and enjoy their skills and because neither of them has ever said anything that upset me, I like them both.
So why am I averse to the idea of the Penguins winning the Stanley Cup? To properly set up this argument, I’m going to examine the organization of another young, talented Eastern Conference team: The Boston Bruins. I was fine with the idea of the now defeated Bruins winning it all. I like the Bruins because it seems that from an outside perspective, the Bruins management has been able to keep the team competitive by qualifying for the playoffs or being just on the fringe of doing so for the greater part of the last ten years. Boston has had only one pick in the top five of the draft (2006) since 1999. Management may have failed to produce a winner, but they were always competitive and able to maintain the possibility of a championship. I applaud the Bruins and their ability to build a contender without having to first sink to the bottom of the league for an extended period of time. The 2008-2009 Bruins are a collection of smart draft picks and players they acquired by making wise personnel moves. All of which is supplemented with a great coach.
On the other hand are the Penguins, whose management has failed its fans in past generations and also as recently as the last ten years. Since 1999, the Pens have been one of the first five teams to select in the draft a total of five times (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006). That string of losing seasons is remarkable in hindsight. They were a huge disappointment as a team during that span largely because of poor management and cost-cutting trades. I have a tough time supporting a franchise that’s able to succeed only after they’ve failed. The Penguins sunk to the bottom of the league in the early ‘80s and as a result were fortunate enough to select Mario Lemieux. The Penguins sunk to the bottom of the league earlier this decade, and were able to select Sidney Crosby, among others. Is that fair?
In the current draft system, the teams that finished at or near the bottom of the standings have a greater probability of picking earlier in the following amateur draft. The NHL uses a lottery system to decide the draft order but bad teams are given better odds at selecting earlier than average/good teams. Basically, the lottery ensures that teams on the bottom of the regular season standings will get one of the earliest picks.
The draft order doesn’t help good, responsible managers; it helps the bad ones, plain and simple. The funny thing is, the Penguins were in the exact same position in 1999 as the Sabres were in 2002: Declaring bankruptcy. The difference was that despite undergoing ownership changes and excessive purging of all their big contracts, the Sabres talent evaluators were able to produce a semi-competitive team. The Penguins sat in the basement of the league for four seasons, collecting high draft picks and stockpiling premiere prospects. The Sabres reward for producing a semi-competitive team during their darkest financial days is that they missed out on a chance to get some incredible players.
Thomas Vanek was a top five pick but he’s the first top five pick the Sabres have had since Pierre Turgeon (1987). In fact, the Sabres have had only one other pick in the top ten of the entry draft from the time they drafted Turgeon until now (Erik Rasmussen, 1996). By league standards, the Sabres have produced a quality product for quite some time. They’ve done so by making shrewd, smart trades and by selecting good prospects that most teams overlook. Isn’t that the type of management the league wants to encourage?
The Sabres have been able to achieve some great things by doing business in that manor but if the Penguins win the Stanley Cup this year, all those achievements with pale in comparison to what Pittsburgh was able to do. The Penguins, like the Tampa Bay Lightning before them, are proving that the best way to build a champion is to be the worst team in the league for a couple of years and draft a superstar or two.
Again, I think that the system the league uses to determine the draft order allows the teams with poor management to cover up for their mistakes with a high draft pick. There’s no doubt this system helps to stimulate parody within the league, but it’s unfair to committed owners who employ capable managers. Besides, the salary cap keeps all teams on a level playing field.
I’m not suggesting that parody within the league is a bad thing or that there’s something wrong with the incentive structure the NHL uses to stimulate competitiveness. I think there are many incentives for a franchise to produce a competitive team. But acquiring a low draft pick is undoubtedly an incentive to do the opposite and just the mere fact that safety net exists fosters an unfair system economically. The Penguins are successful now because of their high draft picks from 2002-2006.