We Had An Understanding

I guess I'll be forced to admit that I was wrong when the NHL recognized that the decentralized NHL Entry Draft this season was a tirefire because, according to a Darren Dreger tweet, "a strong majority of NHL general managers voted in favour" of keeping the decentralized format for 2026's NHL Entry Draft. No one will ever say that the NHL GMs are men who keep up with the trends, but it seems like we're headed towards "tweaking" the format rather than scrapping it altogether or coming up with something new. After all, who has four hours to kill in June?

Dreger's tweet does seem to carry some evidence, though, as Bill Daly told The FAN Morning Show radio show on Friday that "we continue to see support for a decentralized draft". After we heard some GMs lament the lack of interaction between teams and team staff leading to less player movement at the draft last month, I am surprised that there was "a strong majority" who wanted to go this way again. Public outcry over the format and length of the draft seemed not to matter to the GMs who were voting on this, so why bother televising it at all?

Daly told Daniele Franceschi and Zack Bodenstein in that radio interview on The FAN Morning Show radio show,

"A lot of the issues seem to be having efficient access to your hockey operations personnel in kind of a quiet, businesslike setting. I think our clubs take the draft very, very seriously, as they should. It goes to kind of define the future of the franchise, making good decisions and the right decisions from a team standpoint in a draft context. Given how crowded the end of our season has become with all the obligations clubs, managers and players have toward the very end of the season leading up to free agency, I think the efficiency of not having to travel to a central location is something that's very appealing to a number of our clubs."

While I respect that there's a lot of work to do regarding free agency, you control the schedule around which the teams operate, Bill Daly. You could easily slash a few weeks of games off the schedule to open up more time rather than push for an 84-game campaign, but why listen to the fans if you can bleed them dry a little more? Gotta make that record-breaking revenue every single year, right?

According to Daly, "he believes there's an 'easy fix' to shorten it with some work on the production," but I feel like Daly's missing the larger picture here. No one ever had a problem with the old draft format - it's that GMs are saying that the scheduling with the end of the season, the work needed to be done with the scouting staff and other internal departments, meetings with owners, and anything else would be hindered by travelling to a centralized draft location based on how busy those last two weeks of June are. It's not a question of which one do GMs like, but more a question of which one will allow GMs to be prepared for those two weeks of craziness.

Again, I cannot state how agonizingly slow the NHL Entry Draft seemed to move this June. It should not take four hours and 28 minutes to call 32 players to the stage under any circumstance, and the hot mess that was the Facetime videos between players and management teams needs to be removed entirely. If GMs don't want to be at the location to make selections, they don't get to interact with those players after selecting them at the NHL Entry Draft. They can call them on the phone or use whatever method of communication they prefer after that player has cleared the stage area, but the pace of the draft needs to remain high so that fans aren't channel surfing until their teams are making selections.

I guess it's up to Bill Daly and the production crew to cut the Lord of the Stanley Cup Rings drama down from 16 hours to two hours maximum. Anything longer means I'll just watch the highlights.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!