PWHL Adopts "The Gold Plan" For Determining First Overall Pick

The PWHL has adopted "The Gold Plan" to determine which team will earn the first overall draft pick following their playoff elimination as Jayna Hefford explains.

The PWHL has not been afraid to innovate, whether it's the "jailbreak" goal or a 3-2-1 point system. This week the league announced a pair of new adaptations, including allowing the top seed team to pick their opening round playoff opponent, and more notably, adopting the long talked about "Gold Plan" for determining which team will receive the first overall pick in the PWHL Draft. 

Created by Adam Gold, the "Gold Plan" was first presented in 2012 at the Sloan Analytics Conference. Also called the "Draft Order of Selection by Mathematical Elimination," the plan in which teams begin accruing points toward the first overall pick the moment they are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, has been discussed in hockey circles for more than a decade.

"It's to ensure the competitiveness that again, we think is so important that exists in this league," said PWHL senior vice president of hockey operations Jayna Hefford. 

"It's also a way for fans to stay engaged, there'll be a different kind of race once their team gets eliminated. Every game from that point on means something."

The idea was originally brought to Hefford and the Hockey Operations department by PWHL staffer Burton Lee, who serves as the league's Director of Game Operations and Fan Experience. 

Gold's plan does away with other methods of selecting which team will select first overall in a draft, namely draft lotteries, and a straightforward last picks first system.

"Adam's an incredibly passionate guy, he's a brand new PWHL fan and really excited to be a part of this and really excited that our league...is now adopting this draft order that he's come up with...we're excited to see it play out this season," said Hefford in a media conference on Wednesday.

Critics of the system say it erases possible deals at the trade deadline as weaker teams will now look to remain as competitive as possible after they're eliminated, that teams could potentially attempt to "tank" earlier in the season if a title isn't in the cards, and that strength of opponents and difficulty of schedule after teams are eliminated can skew the results. Proponents say it puts less emphasis on "rentals" resulting in a better landscape for players and more emphasis on coaching and internal improvement, and that it keeps all games meaningful for teams.

For the PWHL, they felt like continuing along the path to innovate was an important way to engage fans and keep their on-ice product as competitive as possible.

"We felt like it was another way to continue to engage our fans," said Hefford. "We really like the idea that the performance of the team could also get them to that first draft pick."