Should The NHL Implement the "Gold Plan" for the Draft?
Would it stop teams from tanking the end of the season?
What exactly is “The Gold Plan”? For those who haven’t heard of the concept first introduced by Adam Gold at the 2012 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, it is an innovative draft-order system designed to discourage tanking.
The idea is to reward teams that are out of the playoff race for winning games once mathematically eliminated. Successfully implemented by the PWHL (Professional Women’s Hockey League) since 2024, the objective is to keep late-season games meaningful.
How the Gold Plan Works
Teams play the regular season normally until they are mathematically eliminated from playoff contention.
Once eliminated, they begin accumulating “draft order points” (using the league’s standard points system: 2 points for a win, 1 for an overtime loss).
At the end of the season, the non-playoff team with the most post-elimination points earns the first overall draft pick. The next-highest gets second, and so on.
Unlike the NHL’s current lottery system — which rewards a handful of the worst records with the best odds at the top pick, and then holds a lottery to pick a low team of that group — the Gold Plan rewards the worst teams if they continue to try.
Argument for the “Gold Plan”
On the surface, some will argue that crappy teams don’t just stop being crappy. That makes sense, until you consider that the worst teams in the standings are typically eliminated first, giving them more games to rack up points.
