Five games that changed the outcome of the 2025 draft lottery

Did you enjoy this year’s draft lottery? I did. I thought the new format for the broadcast, which featured the full draw happening live, was a major improvement. As much as I like to complain about the lottery, and occasionally suggest alternatives that would be way better, we appear to be stuck with what we’ve got. And if so, at least the league kind of nailed the presentation this year.

But while the NHL changed the broadcast, they didn’t change the underlying mechanism. That means they still assigned each team a group of combinations, based on their record. And that means that all those combinations, including the winning ones, were tied to a specific spot in the standings. And that means that shifting the teams that finished in the winning 19th and 23rd spots in the standings would have changed the results.

Which means… yep, we get to go looking for games that changed the lottery results.

This is a gimmick we break out every now and then, if and when the results allow it. Sometimes we get a drawing like last year, where the Sharks won the lottery after being five points worse than any other team. No game can give you a five-point swing, so there was no point looking any deeper. But this year, the lottery gods had a few surprises up their sleeves with those longshot wins for the Islanders and Utah, so we can have some fun with the results.

Well, “fun” might be relative here. Half the point is that this won’t be fun for certain fan bases, who may not realize just how close they came to a potentially franchise-altering draft pick. We’re trying to make you sad, here. It’s kind of our thing.

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