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As the NHL season wound down, fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs found themselves cheering for their team to lose against the Florida Panthers.
Just one season ago, those two teams were locked in a bitter, second-round playoff battle. Cheering for a loss was inconceivable. But with both teams eliminated from this year’s playoffs, losing was the best path toward better odds to land the top draft pick.
In the final week of the PWHL’s regular season, it’s a completely different story. With the Seattle Torrent and Vancouver Goldeneyes both eliminated from playoff contention, there’s incentive for both teams to win games.
That’s the only way a team can secure the first-overall pick in this year’s entry draft, likely to be Caroline Harvey, a generational defender who was the MVP at the most recent Olympic tournament.
Welcome to the PWHL’s Gold Plan.
While fans of other leagues are lamenting the impact of tanking, the Gold Plan has eliminated that.
Adopted in the league’s first season, the plan sees eliminated teams earn “draft order points” by winning games. A regulation win earns three points, an overtime win earns two, and an overtime loss earns one point. The eliminated team that earns the most Gold Plan points wins the first-overall pick at the entry draft.
The New York Sirens won the right to draft first overall in the past two seasons, adding Sarah Fillier and Kristýna Kaltounková.
This year, the race for the most Gold Plan points is more interesting than ever. Only four of the PWHL’s eight teams will make the playoffs, which means more teams are competing for the top draft pick.
“With this draft order, there are no more easy games,” Gold Plan creator Adam Gold told CBC Sports. “Everyone’s trying to win. For these teams, there really is no tomorrow. They are playing for the opportunity to win in future seasons. To win with [top prospects] Caroline Harvey or to win with Laila Edwards or with Abbey Murphy, they have to demonstrate that they can win without them.”
Not only does the concept give fans of bottom-ranking teams something to cheer for when their team won’t be competing for a Walter Cup, but it also takes the chance of a lottery ball out of the equation.
‘The biggest loser is no longer the winner’
It’s an idea that Gold, a St. Louis Blues fan who’s a senior data scientist in crop science at Bayer, came up with nearly 20 years ago.
In 2012, when Gold was a PhD student at the University Missouri, he presented it at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
“To make it really clear, the biggest loser is no longer the biggest winner,” Gold summarized.
But it wasn’t until 2024, when the PWHL launched, that a major sports league put Gold’s work into practice.
Powerplay goals by Toronto’s Savannah Harmon and Daryl Watts gave the Sceptres a 2-0 shutout victory over Minnesota Frost Sunday in late regular season PWHL play.
It’s one of several unique rules and adaptations the PWHL has adopted, along with the idea that the first-place team gets to pick its first-round playoff opponent, and the jailbreak rule that sees a player freed from the penalty box if their team scores shorthanded.
“We wanted to find ways to improve the game, to make it more engaging for fans, to make it fun,” PWHL executive vice president of hockey operations, Jayna Hefford, said at the end of the league’s first season. “We didn’t want to change hockey and the traditionalism of hockey, but we wanted to do things a little bit differently.”
For Gold, it was a call he’d waited to 15 years to receive.
“I was really excited to be able to see it in action,” Gold said.
Could it work elsewhere?
New York didn’t face any competition for Gold Plan points over the last two seasons, as other teams competed for the final playoff spots up to the last day of the regular season.
This season, it’s different.
In Saturday’s game between Seattle and Vancouver, both teams had something at stake. Eliminated Seattle was looking to earn Gold Plan points toward the first overall pick. Meanwhile, Vancouver had to win in regulation to stay in the playoff race.
Vancouver won 6-5 in overtime, which eliminated the Goldeneyes and earned the Torrent only one Gold Plan point.
From a storyline perspective, it adds more drama. Gold suggested the race for the top draft pick could add another layer to the rivalry between Seattle and Vancouver.
“We’re going to see somebody score that first-overall goal for Caroline Harvey,” Gold said. “Who’s going to score? Who is going to make that play?”
As Gold pointed out, it’s not just about adding points through wins. It’s also the strategy behind preventing opponents from securing Gold Plan points.
Rebecca Leslie and Payton Hemp scored short-handed jailbreak goals leading Ottawa to a 5-1 victory over New York Sirens, as the Charge currently hold the fourth and final playoff spot in the PWHL standings.
The New York Sirens could be the next team to be eliminated, which would add even more intrigue to the final week of the regular season. Not only could there be a race to the end for the fourth and final playoff spot, but also for the top draft pick.
New York Sirens GM Pascal Daoust, who’s also worked in the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League, sees it as a model that other leagues could adopt.
“They would have to personalize, to customize it, but there’s definitely a great foundation to use for any league to keep for the fans who are walking in to watch the game, to keep the compete level,” Daoust said in an interview.
Gold believes the adoption of his plan will force the NHL and NBA to pay attention to how the PWHL does things.
Parity was a goal when the PWHL was created. So far, the games over the past three seasons show anyone can win. That’s not always the case in the NHL or NBA.
“What would be some potential solutions that we could change about the NHL or the NBA, where we could have an expectation that any team could win on any given night?” Gold said. “It allows leagues to look at new opportunities and really leverage the promotion of women’s sports.”
