Buffalo Sabres should eventually come out winners in NHL’s biggest loser battle

After booing a last-place team for most of the season, Buffalo fans will finally get to cheer at the league draft in June when Connor McDavid or Jack Eichel could be added to the line-up, writes Rob McKenzie.

Marcus Foligno and his Buffalo Sabres teammates have fallen to the bottom of the league but a top pick in next year’s draft could ease their pain. Fred Kfoury III / AP Photo

Ice hockey’s worst team, most probably the Buffalo Sabres, unless they mess up, will be rewarded with a top-two draft pick.

A spot at the bottom of the standings leads to relegation in European football, but in the North American big leagues, failure is its own reward. The worse you are, the higher your spot in the draft.

That is especially meaningful this year, when the consensus holds that two outstanding prospects are available: Connor McDavid, a big, smart, ultra-fast forward who is described as a once-in-a-generation talent; and Jack Eichel, a centre whose emphasis is more on toughness, and who is almost certain to be chosen second.

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Under National Hockey League rules, the 14 teams that miss the play-offs have a shot at the top pick. They go into a draft lottery, which is weighted to favour the lousiest teams. The very worst team gets a 20 per cent chance at the top spot; the 14th-worst team, perhaps Ottawa, gets a one per cent chance.

But here comes the catch. The lottery applies only to the top pick. After that, teams are slotted into draft position in reverse order of the standings.

So even if the worst team loses the lottery, they slide down only to second spot.

Which is why fans in Buffalo have been cheering for their Sabres to lose – they crave McDavid or Eichel.

“This is a whole new low right now,” Sabres defenceman Mike Weber said after Buffalo fans cheered when the Arizona Coyotes, a rival for worst team, scored the winning goal in overtime last month.

But who can blame them? They are simply taking the long view.

The same has been said of Sabres management, which stands accused of tanking to wrap its mitts around a top-two draft spot.

There was a stretch this season when Buffalo were dangerously good. From mid-November through mid-December the Sabres won 10 of 13 games. Much of the credit went to a hot streak by their generally inconsistent goalie, Jhonas Enroth.

Leery of another such outburst, the Buffalo brain trust wisely put Enroth out of harm’s way and traded him to Dallas.

That same day, they shipped two of their best players to Winnipeg for two Jets players, which might have been a fair deal, if only one of the Winnipeggers had not been injured and ruled out for the rest of the season.

Buffalo’s season appears, in this respect at least, and perhaps in this respect only, a success. Still, the players did muddy the waters on Monday by defeating Carolina 4-3 to pull within two points of Arizona with two games left.

If the two bottom-feeders end up tied on points, the Sabres win the bottom spot by virtue of fewer non-shootout wins.

An oddity of recent hockey history suggests that either one of McDavid or Eichel would be better off in Buffalo than in Arizona. Or, more generally, they would be better off if a cold-weather team drafts them.

In the 46 seasons since the NHL expanded to 12 teams, only three times has the league’s MVP award gone to a player who started the season with a team located south of Washington, most recently, Corey Perry of the Anaheim Ducks, in 2010/11.

The chance of that having happened is, by a back-of-the-envelope calculation, not much.

It could be that in snowy climes, where people tend to care more about hockey, the pressure and the passion create a crucible in which greatness can be forged. In warm climes, where hockey tends not to be the only game in town, it is easier to glide into being good but not great.

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