Which NHL team tanked the best in the race for Connor Bedard?
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By Sean McIndoe
Apr 14, 2023
The great Connor Bedard tank-off of 2022-23 finally ends Friday. Who did it best?
On one level, the answer is obvious: Anaheim, who clinched 32nd place with their loss last night. Easy
On another level, the answer is that we don’t know yet. After all, the lottery isn’t until May 8. We don’t know if 32nd will be the magic spot that means Anaheim gets the No. 1 pick in the draft. The season tells us who gets the best odds, but the lottery tells us who actually wins. Until then, the question doesn’t have an answer.
I think there’s a third option, and that’s that we can’t get too caught up in the results. In sports, and especially the NHL, randomness rules. Just like the best team doesn’t always win the Stanley Cup, the best tanker doesn’t always win the top pick. We can still try to figure out who did the best job of tanking, even if it didn’t pay off at the end. Bust the process, so to speak.
So today, let’s go through the 11 teams with the worst records in the league, and see if we can come up with an objective way to rank them based on how blatantly and effectively they managed to tank. We’ll do that using five categories:
Offseason moves: The key to any truly great tank is starting early. How much of the deck did the team clear before the season even began?
Opening-night expectations: If everyone thinks you’re going to be good in October, you’re probably not tanking.
Goaltending situation: When it comes to tanking, goaltending is always the most important position. You want it to be bad, and then you want to make sure you don’t do anything to make it better.
Coach factor: Coaches don’t tank, but let’s just say you don’t want Scotty Bowman back there when you’re trying to finish last.
Deadline selloff: If you’ve done it right, your season should be spiraling down the drain by February. That’s when it’s time to finish the job with an aggressive deadline clearance sale.
We’ll mark each of those out of 10, mix in a few bonus points where needed, and come up with a final score. We’re counting down from 10th to first, and unlike the 82 games your team just played, you actually want to win.
11. Philadelphia Flyers
Wait, if you finish last on this list, does that mean you tanked at tanking?
Offseason moves: 4/10. Quiet, apart from what they thought was an upgrade in Tony DeAngelo.
Opening-night expectations: 8/10. Most of us figured they’d be bad, although not necessarily bad enough to compete for top lottery odds. (Checks standings.) Nailed it.
Goaltending situation: 3/10. With Carter Hart coming off a solid rebound season, the Flyers seemed as set as any team on this list.
Coach factor: 2/10. They went out and hired John Tortorella, a coach who specializes in squeezing the most out of a roster (including loser points). Purely in terms of a tanking opportunity, that didn’t seem ideal.
Deadline selloff: 0/10. Help me out here, when your GM does next to nothing at the deadline and then gets fired a few days later, is that bad?
Bonus points: +2 for new management which may finally see the writing on the wall, although it really came too late for this season.
Total score: 19/50. The Flyers are a bad team that should have been even worse, making them the current poster child for a franchise spinning its wheels.
10. St. Louis Blues
I considered not even including the Blues, but their record says they should be here.
Offseason moves: 5/10. They moved Ville Husso and lost David Perron, but that felt more like roster/cap management than an attempt at getting worse.
Opening-night expectations: 2/10. Coming off a 109-point season, we thought they were at least a playoff team.
Goaltending situation: 3/10. Jordan Binnington wasn’t great, but with his contract and Cup ring it’s not like they were ever going to make a change.
Coach factor: 3/10. Craig Berube’s seat is probably getting warm but you never figured he was in any immediate danger.
Deadline selloff: 9/10. Here’s where we can finally find some points, as they moved Vladimir Tarasenko and Ryan O’Reilly (and got both deals done a few weeks early).
Bonus points: -1 for going a combined 11-1-0 against the Ducks, Blue Jackets, Blackhawks and Sharks. Just no sense of the moment, you know?
Total score: 21/50. This wasn’t a tank, it was a season where everything went wrong.
9. Vancouver Canucks
Pretty uneventful season, yeah?
Offseason moves: 2/10. They signed Ilya Mikheyev. More importantly, they extended J.T. Miller rather than selling high, because they were trying to win.
Opening-night expectations: 4/10. They seemed like a borderline playoff team.
Goaltending situation: 5/10. This is a tricky one. Thatcher Demko wasn’t great, to put it mildly. But that kind of came out of nowhere, so it’s not like the Canucks had much choice. Finding almost 30 starts for Spencer Martin was inspiring, though.
Coach factor: 5/10. The Bruce Boudreau thing became a fiasco. Then they hired Rick Tocchet, who improved them enough to make sure they wouldn’t get near the basement. Was the original plan to just let Boudreau twist in the wind all season long before they were shamed into making a move? We may never know.
Deadline selloff: 7/10. They never did move Miller or Brock Boeser, but we’ll give them credit for being the first major seller when they dealt Bo Horvat in January.
Bonus points: -1 for the five-game win streak that arrived just as their fans were starting to embrace the losses. Really twist the knife.
Total score: 23/50. In a season where the generational prospect at the end of the rainbow is local kid and a Canucks fan, this could have been so much more with a little vision.
8. Detroit Red Wings
OK but seriously, next year they’ll be right in the mix.
Offseason moves: 1/10. Steve Yzerman went wild, bringing in a ton of reinforcements. None were exactly superstars, but it all added up to the single biggest offseason improvement of any team. (Or so we thought.)
Opening-night expectations: 5/10. We figured they’d hang around long enough to play meaningful games in the second half, although an Eastern Conference playoff spot felt far-fetched.
Goaltending situation: 7/10. Ville Husso was supposed to be the answer. He was not. Neither was Alex Nedeljkovic. Magnus Hellberg, who they snagged off waivers in November, also wasn’t. After that, it was just those three sub-.900 save percentage guys all season long.
Coach factor: 3/10. After years of patience with Jeff Blashill, Yzerman turned to Derek Lalonde, a veteran getting his first shot at an NHL head coaching job.
Deadline selloff: 9/10. After watching his playoff bubble team get smoked in back-to-back games in Ottawa, Yzerman flipped the script and went full seller, trading Tyler Bertuzzi, Jakub Vrana, Filip Hronek and Oskar Sundqvist. Message received, boss.
Bonus points: -1 because we all know the Red Wings will never win the lottery so tanking feels kind of pointless.
Total score: 24/50. Is the patience for Yzerman’s perpetual rebuild starting to fade just a bit?
7. Columbus Blue Jackets
Surprised to see them so soon? Don’t be, because for most of the season, they weren’t tanking at all.
Offseason moves: 1/10. The Blue Jackets shocked everyone by signing the biggest UFA on the market, which doesn’t seem like a great strategy for finishing last.
Opening-night expectations: 5/10. They were a divisive team. Dom’s projections had them flat, and maybe even regressing a bit. The comments section did not agree. Spoiler alert: One side was more right than the other.
Goaltending situation: 8/10. Elvis Merzlikins came into the season as a starter, and he was very bad. Backup Joonas Korpisalo was better, so they wisely traded him at the deadline.
Coach factor: 3/10. Brad Larsen hasn’t had much of a chance to show what he can do, as this was only Year 2.
Deadline selloff: 7/10. In addition to moving Korpisalo, they also traded Vladislav Gavrikov and Gustav Nyquist.
Bonus points: +1 for Zach Werenski’s injury that ended his season in November. It wasn’t part of the plan, but once it happened the strategy clearly shifted.
Total score: 25/50. Would finishing close to dead last when you weren’t even tanking make it feel better or worse? I’m pretty sure it’s worse.
6. Washington Capitals
I’m a little surprised to see them this high. Or to see them at all, honestly.
Offseason moves: 2/10. They made a few changes, most notably bringing in the Stanley Cup-winning goaltender as a high-priced free agent. That doesn’t seem very tanky.
Opening-night expectations: 3/10. They were coming off a 100-point season and generally expected to make the playoffs, although age and injuries made it feel precarious enough that you knew the window was closing at some point.
Goaltending situation: 4/10. On paper, swapping out Vitek Vanecek and Ilya Samsonov for Darcy Kuemper was an upgrade. It didn’t really work out that way, but Kuemper was fine, and along with Charlie Lindgren allowed the Caps to be one of the few teams to make it all the way through the season without ever playing a third goaltender.
Coach factor: 7/10. Peter Laviolette is in the last year of his deal and sure seems to be on the way out, but once things went bad the Capitals didn’t make any moves that might have righted the ship.
Deadline selloff: 8/10. Give Brian MacLellan credit, he read the writing on the wall. Rather than chase the bubble fringe, he sold hard on guys like Dmitry Orlov, Marcus Johansson and Lars Eller.
Bonus points: +2 for racking up losses down the stretch. No team moved down the standings more than the Caps over the last two months.
Total score: 26/50. This was supposed to be a good team with longshot Cup aspirations, so they just started too late to be an especially formidable tank. Still, once they saw which way the wind was blowing, they put on an impressive late push.
5. Montreal Canadiens
Would the NHL’s worst team in 2021-22 try for a repeat with Bedard looming?
Offseason moves: 5/10. It was mostly a wash, with Kirby Dach coming in and Alexander Romanov heading out, with a few veterans tossed onto the pile.
Opening-night expectations: 9/10. The Habs were expected to be better because they could hardly be worse, but dead last wasn’t out of the question.
Goaltending situation: 7/10. It had been a disaster in 2021-22 when Jake Allen was hurt. They didn’t bring in any help, although this time Allen was mostly available and Sam Montembeault looked better.
Coach factor: 4/10. Martin St. Louis had been a head-scratching hire when the Dominique Ducharme bubble burst, but it worked.
Deadline selloff: 3/10. In fairness, they didn’t have much to move, although some fans might have been hoping that somebody like Josh Anderson, Jonathan Drouin or Joel Edmundson would be dealt. Instead it was mostly quiet.
Bonus points: +2 for being that team that started shutting everyone down midway through the year. To be clear, these were legitimate injuries. But it was also an opportunity to make sure everyone’s recovered for next year while also losing a few more games.
Total score: 30/50. This feels low for the Habs, who were clearly focused on a rebuild. Still, are you really tanking if your record improves by almost 15 points?
4. Anaheim Ducks
Hold on, they just got scored on again.
Offseason moves: 6/10. Not much, apart from signing John Klingberg so that they could trade him at the deadline. Otherwise, they were a rebuilding team that didn’t try to get all that much better.
Opening-night expectations: 4/10. Not great, but better than you probably remember them.
Goaltending situation: 8/10. We’re now into Year 4 of waiting for John Gibson to regain his old form, and this was his worst season yet. Despite some trade whispers, the Ducks stuck with him to the tune of over 50 starts, although given his contract they may not have had much choice.
Coach factor: 9/10. We know the change is coming. We’ve known it since last year. Pat Verbeek chose to let Dallas Eakins twist all season, even after the Ducks won just one of their first eight. You figure it out.
Deadline selloff: 5/10. They didn’t get as much as they’d hoped for Klingberg, and didn’t make much in the way of noise otherwise.
Bonus points: +2 because Verbeek did his selling at last year’s deadline, then didn’t replace any of those guys.
Total score: 34/50. This wasn’t a traditional tank from Day 1, but it quickly became clear that this team was very bad, and Verbeek made the choice to let them stay that way.
3. Arizona Coyotes
They openly tanked in 2014-15, and it didn’t pay off. Second time’s the charm?
Offseason moves: 6/10. They did next to nothing. Given how bad they’d been the year before, that wasn’t the worst strategy in the world, although the lack of a Jakob Chychrun trade was a surprise.
Opening-night expectations: 10/10. They were a very trendy pick to finish dead last.
Goaltending situation: 7/10. From a tank perspective, this felt like a strength heading into the season, since there’s a good chance you’d never heard of Karel Vejmelka. But he was solid in the first half, especially in November, which made you wonder if they’d trade him. They didn’t, although he cooled off down the stretch.
Coach factor: 5/10. André Tourigny was back for a second season after nearly guiding the team to dead last in 2021-22. A successful junior coach without any real track record of NHL success, he was just about perfect for a rebuilding team.
Deadline selloff: 6/10. The big move was finally dealing Chychrun, although the return was disappointing, and it took months longer than it should have. They also moved Shayne Gostisbehere.
Bonus points: +2 because there were nights I’m not sure I could have named any Coyotes aside from Clayton Keller but also -1 because somehow Tourigny got this group to consistently overachieve.
Total score: 35/50. They tried. Unfortunately for their Bedard odds, that “they” included the players, who never seemed to buy in the being as bad as we all expected.
2. San Jose Sharks
Mike Grier replaced Doug Wilson, signaling a change in direction for a team that been playoff-worthy for nearly two decades and didn’t seem to realize when that changed.
Offseason moves: 6/10. The big move was basically giving Brent Burns to the Hurricanes to free up cap space.
Opening-night expectations: 7/10. Coming off a bad 2021-22, the Sharks weren’t expected to be any better, even as we weren’t sure they could be much worse. (Spoiler: They could be worse.)
Goaltending situation: 7/10. It was the James Reimer and Kaapo Kähkönen show pretty much all season, and the show was not good.
Coach factor: 8/10. They waited until late June to fire Bob Boughner, spent four weeks looking for a replacement, then went with David Quinn, who’d never won a playoff game with a decent Rangers team.
Deadline selloff: 7/10. Grier pulled the trigger on the obvious Timo Meier deal, but didn’t find a way to move Erik Karlsson in the midst of a Norris-worthy season.
Bonus points: +1 in recognition of the Sharks actually having the fewest wins in the league. Damn you, loser point.
Total score: 36/50. They weren’t as over-the-top about things as some other teams we could mention, but with a new GM with a mandate, the Sharks had a plan and they stuck to it.
1. Chicago Blackhawks
OK, maybe there wasn’t a ton of suspense for top spot.
Offseason moves: 9/10. They traded Alex DeBrincat and Kirby Dach without getting anything back except picks. Maybe as importantly, they traded for Petr Mrazek. We’ll dock them one point for adding Max Domi, but that was mainly to have deadline bait. By mid-July, everyone knew what was up.
Opening-night expectations: 10/10. Along with the Coyotes, the Hawks were just about everyone’s pick to finish in the basement.
Goaltending situation: 7/10. Mrazek was a near-perfect “plausible deniability” goalie, a guy who could be expected to be bad but who’d had enough success that you could pretend you were trying. Alex Stalock emerging as a surprisingly dependable option was a tough break.
Coach factor: 6/10. They gave the job to a deserving Luke Richardson. First-timers are always a bit tricky since you never know what kind of impact they’ll have, but Richardson clearly understood that this was a year for playing the kids.
Deadline selloff: 8/10. They bit the bullet and traded Patrick Kane, plus Jake McCabe and Domi. Not being able to move Jonathan Toews hurts a bit, but that wasn’t their fault.
Bonus points: -2 for inexcusably beating the desperate Penguins this week. I’m still not sure how that happened.
Total score: 38/50. Give them credit, I guess — they never hid what was happening. Now we wait and see if it pays off.
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