Penguins staying put in Pittsburgh
Lemieux has saved the Penguins…AGAIN.
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell announced today that the Penguins have reached an agreement on a new arena with city, county and state officials that will keep the team in Pittsburgh.
The agreement will keep the Pens in Steeltown for the next 30 years and the new arena will be open for operation for the 2009-10 NHL season. The team will donate $3.8 million a year towards the construction, which might go over the estimated $290 million.
People in Kansas City must continue to live with the NHL GLORY that the Scouts teased the city with for at least another season. Who’s to say the Panthers wouldn’t move?
New format to determine draft order voted in
Sort of.
NHL teams voted 23-6 with one abstention in favor of a slightly new system that will rank teams in accordance to playoff success rather than strictly on regular season results.
In the current system, the 14 non-playoff teams would always get picks 1-14 (in whatever order the lottery resulted in) and the 16 playoff teams would follow based on their regular season results (regardless of whatever playoff success they had that season) with the exception of the Cup champions, who would automatically draft at #30.
With the new system: the farther you go in the playoffs the more you fall down the draft order.
14 non-playoff teams draft 1-14.
Then the teams who lose in 1st round of the playoffs are ranked, except those who won their divisions in the regular season (15-20, based on inverse order of regular season points)
Then season division winners (21-26, based on inverse regular season points)
Conference finalists get the next two slots (27-28)
And the two Cup finalists are then given a draft order spot with the losers going at #29 and the winners at #30.
And there you go! Easy!
This means that the Flyers, Kings and Coyotes remain that the top runners for that coveted #1 draft spot which will result in disappointment because these teams have a long history of crappy draft decisions. Then again, the Blue Jackets and Blackhawks are making a run at top draft spots as well.
