For Shane Doan, the NHL's draft lottery system hits close to home.
It was literally a topic of conversation around the family dinner table last season after his son, a die-hard Arizona Coyotes fan, began cheering for the team to lose in order to increase its chances of landing the first overall pick.
"My son (Josh) is literally the biggest Coyotes fan that you'll ever meet," Doan told Sarah McLellan of azcentral sports. "He lives, breathes - he, until very recently, would be physically upset when we lost, and it'd break your heart. And I remember him cheering after games, being mad, but being happy we lost - like cheering against us.
"And it was awful, and I hated it and I thought it was the stupidest thing in the world because here's a guy who's the most passionate Coyotes fan cheering against us."
Doan's solution? Reward teams who keep winning even after being eliminated from the playoffs.
"The day you're mathematically eliminated, you start accumulating points," Doan explained. "When you get to the end of the year, whoever's accumulated the most points gets the first overall pick."
This would keep fans of non-playoff teams engaged to the very end of the regular season, cheering for the accumulation of points instead of hoping for losses. The finer details would need to be ironed out, but Doan believes it's an ideal starting point.
"You should always be cheering for your team or have something to look forward to in your team, and so I've been a big proponent of this system and trying to give your team something to play for because ... every fan could be behind you," he said.
"These next (four) games would be huge for us, huge for us, because you'd have the ability to dictate where you're going to be. Your coaches would be coaching to win. Your management would be managing to win, and there'd be immense pressure to keep winning and it'd help you."
As it stands, the Coyotes have a 6 percent chance of landing local boy Auston Matthews with the first overall pick this June.
