NHL draft lottery hindsight fun: The games that we now know changed the outcome

The NHL draft lottery was this week, and the results were met with unanimous praise and approval. But what if things had been different?

Specifically, what if one game, or even one moment, from the 2025-26 season had played out just slightly differently? As it turns out, that can change everything. Because of the way the process works, and how the league hands out combinations to specific spots in the standings, any result that shifted those standings would also have ended up changing the lottery outcomes.

That’s the theory, at least. And it’s one we’ve had some fun with over the years, like the time that Patrik Stefan’s infamous open-net blooper ended up sending Patrick Kane to Chicago instead of Edmonton. Last year, we discovered that a random Sabres/Islanders game nobody even remembered ended up sending Matthew Schaefer to New York instead of Buffalo. That might turn out to be important someday.

We can’t do this every year, because sometimes the gaps between teams are wide enough that there’s no single game that works. For example, if the Canucks had won the lottery this year, we wouldn’t have been able to find a game that swung the (checks notes) 14-point gap between them and the next team.

But as you may have heard, the Canucks did not win the lottery. Instead, the lucky numbers belonged to the 28th-place Maple Leafs and the 24th-place Sharks. Bad news for Vancouver, but good news for us in the hindsight business, because it gives us plenty to work with.

As always, if you’re the sort of person who’s going to be bothered by the premise here, and think you might feel tempted to wade into the comments section and rant about butterfly effects and the concept of rational determinism, kindly go be a wet blanket somewhere else. For the rest of us, let’s find some moments that changed history.

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Your lottery team knows where their pick is now. Here’s why they should trade it

Last night saw the hockey world settle in to watch the NHL draft lottery, an annual event in which a collection of ping pong balls reward whichever franchise and its fans are found to be the most noble and pure of heart.

So now we know the NHL’s order for this June’s draft, pending any trades. And it really feels like we’re only saying that last part to be polite. It’s exceedingly rare to see a team trade a pick in the first half of the first round, at least once the lottery has come and gone and the pick order is locked in. And that’s especially true if you ignore trades where teams move up or down a few spots, like the Flyers moving up to 12th last year in a minor draft floor deal with the Penguins. As far as anything bigger, we might see a move every year or two, like last year’s Noah Dobson trade, or the Senators getting Alex DeBrincat in 2022. But it’s rare.

And that's a shame, because every lottery team should be open to trading their pick. Yes, all of them.

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NHL Draft Lottery power rankings: Who needs it, who deserves it, who passes the Leafs?

The draft lottery is tonight, with 15 teams vying to move up the order and the Canucks hoping to stay put in the one-spot. With separate lotteries for each of the first two picks, there are a number of ways this could all play out. Let’s dig into some of the possibilities, in our annual draft lottery power rankings.

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Draft lottery power rankings: Who needs it, who deserves it, who might trade it?

It’s now been ten years since I wrote a column that lives in infamy.

Back then, while working for a site called Grantland, I decided it would be fun to write a power rankings-style column about the upcoming NHL draft lottery. There was a kid named Connor McDavid available that year, so the lottery had huge ramifications for the teams involved. So I wrote the piece, one that built towards the main punchline that any result would be fine as long as the Oilers didn’t win. And everyone had a good laugh.

Then the lottery happened, and nobody was laughing anymore.

It all worked out for the best, he said, in case any Oiler fans were reading, and the lottery power rankings went on to become a tradition. A decade later, it’s time to dig into our annual lists of who needs it, who deserves it, and who Gary Bettman is going to rig it for.

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Draft lottery power rankings: Chaos, comedy and conspiracies for Connor

The biggest draft lottery in almost a decade has arrived, and tonight’s the night we find out who’s going to get to take Connor Bedard with the first overall pick. It’s a top-heavy draft, meaning the early order is even more important than most years. And with so many team having tanked accidentally been terrible all at the same time, those ping pong ball bounces will be a make-or-break moment for several franchises.

You can find the actual odds here, but we like to go a little deeper. It’s time for the annual draft lottery power rankings, in which we figure out which results would lead to chaos, conspiracies and comedy. The first-ever edition of these rankings came in 2015, when a different Connor was the big prize. Let’s just say that one was very funny right up until it wasn’t. How will this year turn out? We’ll find out in a few hours, but for now, let’s get to the rankings.

The "Maximum Chaos" Ranking

If there’s one team every true fan cheers for, it’s (checks notes) whoever’s playing the Leafs. But if there are two, then the other one is Team Chaos.

Not ranked: Columbus Blue Jackets – After years of hype, Bedard goes to a team that barely anyone even hates? Lame.

5. Ottawa Senators – The Coyotes own their pick from the Jakob Chychrun trade. It would be fun if Ottawa moved all the way up to the second spot and we all got to momentarily think Arizona had pulled off a heist, before remembering that the pick is top-five protected.

4. Detroit Red Wings – Detroit winning a draft lottery? Their fans would be so confused.

3. Montreal Canadiens – Their fan reactions were absolutely phenomenal at last year’s draft. Granted, that was in Montreal. Would the whole fan base show up in Nashville? For Connor Bedard, maybe they would.

2. The 1001st number – Aaron Portzline dug into the complicated process behind the lottery, which doesn’t work the way most fans think it does. There are no ping pong balls with team logos on it, but rather 14 numbers that add up to 1,001 possible combinations, of which 1,000 are assigned to teams. What happens if that one unused number wins? Nothing, really; they’d just redo it. But it would still be fun to imagine a room full of team reps frantically searching their lists until they realized that none of them had it.

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An idea for determing the draft order that’s so ridiculous it might be brilliant

One of the things I like to do in my columns is to occasionally throw a new idea out into the world. Helpful suggestions, if you will. Sometimes, it’s because I really think I have a genuinely better way of doing things. Other times, I’m trying to make a larger point.

Not today. I’m under no illusions that today’s suggestion would ever happen, because I acknowledge that on a certain level, it’s just dumb. It has zero chance of becoming reality, and even writing about it is a total waste of my time and yours.

Also, it’s completely brilliant. Stay with me.

While I wish I could claim all the credit here, that honor goes to reader Drew, who sent me an outline of the idea. It’s a topic that’s I’ve railed about before: The draft order, how best to determine it, and the related issues of tanking and fan bases checking out on the season. As it stands now, we encourage bad teams to lose as much as possible, assign some odds based on the final standings, and then let a barrel full of ping pong balls sort it out. Surely, there has to be a better way.

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Which bad team is best positioned to fail hard for Bedard? Introducing the Tank Index

It’s mid-November, and it goes without saying that every NHL team is focused on the big prize.

Which prize? That part depends on the team.

For most teams, it’s the Stanley Cup. You’ve probably heard of it. Big silver thing, apparently pretty heavy, hangs out in the Hall of Fame in Toronto for most of the year and then heads down to America in the spring. But that’s not every team’s focus, and that’s especially true this year.

We can be honest, right? We don’t have to do the Gary Bettman thing, where he pretends that NHL teams never tank and it’s only the mean old media making stuff up. That kind of thing is insulting to your intelligence as a fan, because you know teams tank, because you have eyes and a brain. Sure, you might prefer to call it something else, especially when your team is doing it. But you know a tank when you see it.

And we’ll be seeing a few of them this year, because the top of the draft class of 2023 is absolutely stacked. There could be three legitimate franchise players, including Connor Bedard, who might be the next Crosby or McDavid or maybe even more. Remember, the league nerfed their lottery system a few years ago, so whichever team finishes dead last this year is guaranteed to get one of those top three picks. The incentive to bad is obvious. Sorry Gary, fire up the tank and let’s roll.

But which teams will do it? And when? And most importantly of all, who’s in the best position to make it work? Welcome to the Tank Index, where we try to find out. This is a gimmick I typically pull out later in the season. But this year isn’t typical, and with so much prospect gold waiting at the end of the tanking rainbow, it might be worth it to check in a few times as the season goes on.

We’ll be looking at a few factors:

Season so far: You can’t win the top pick in October, but you can go a long way to losing it. Even a few extra points picked up in the first month can be devastating to a team’s tank, so how bad has a team looked in the early going?

Seller potential: The best way to tank is to trade useful players for picks and prospects, because you get to collect future assets while also getting worse in the short term. Of course, you need some useful players first, especially ones on expiring contracts.

Goaltending problems: Even in today’s NHL, it remains true that teams go as far as their goaltending takes them. If you want to tank, you’d better make sure your goalie stinks, because there’s nothing worse than watching some guy stand on his head and cost you precious lottery odds.

Motivation: A tricky one, but maybe the most important factor of all. This one starts with the GM, who needs job security to go all-in on being bad. Will ownership understand and accept the plan? What about the market, and local media? It’s not easy to tank when one or more stakeholders aren’t on board.

We’ll give each team a score in all four categories, and see where that leaves them. For this first 2022-23 tank index, I’m going to focus on the eight worst teams by points percentage heading into Tuesday night, then add four more that I think are worth including based on preseason expectations. That brings us to an even dozen, and we’ll count them down as we work our way to this year’s early tank favorite.

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Chaos, comedy and conspiracies in the draft lottery power rankings

The draft lottery goes tomorrow night, meaning all you fans of the bad teams will have something to pay attention to for an hour before going back to hate-watching the playoffs. It’s a bit of a weird year, with some new rules kicking in and a consensus top pick in Shane Wright who’s considered blue chip but maybe not quite a generational can’t-miss. (That’s next year.)

You can find the real odds for each team here, but we’re not all that worried about those. Instead, we want to have some fun with what could happen, before reality shows up and makes a few of you very happy and the rest of you very angry.

The “Maximum Chaos” Ranking

The largest and most dedicated fan base in the league is Team Chaos and it’s not all that close. Here’s what we’re rooting for.

Not ranked: Detroit Red Wings – A high pick would be just what Steve Yzerman’s 25-year rebuild plan needed.

5. Chicago Blackhawks – Aside from launching roughly a million conspiracy theories – more on that in a bit – the Hawks are the only team in this year’s lottery that could make a genuinely good case that winning a top pick would be a bad thing. Plus getting Shane Wright would probably convince Jonathan Toews and friends that they were Cup contenders again.

4. Montreal Canadiens – The Habs are always chaotic, and finishing off the only 32nd-place finish in the history of the NHL with their first number one pick in 42 years would be very on-brand.

3. New Jersey Devils – They’ve already won the lottery for the first overall pick twice in the last few years, and that was part of the inspiration for last year’s announcement that the league would finally implement a limit on how many times the same team could win. But here’s the catch: The rule didn’t kick in until this year’s lottery, which means not only does it not prevent the Devils from winning Tuesday night, it wouldn’t even stop them from winning again in 2023. Yes, the team that helped us get a “You can’t win too often” rule could still land Shane Wright and Conon Bedard. I feel like a lot of fans don’t realize that, so consider this step one in a two-part process.

2. Columbus Blue Jackets – Sitting with the 12th best odds, the Blue Jackets are the first team that can’t move up all the way to number one, because teams can now only move up ten spots. Here’s my question: What happens if we draw them first, which would give them the second pick? Is the next drawing now for the first pick? Third? Can the second team bump the Blue Jackets down to third? Has anyone actually thought any of this through? You’d think they must have, but this is the NHL, so…

1. Vegas Golden Knights – The Knights are going to show up on a few of these lists, and for good reason. They can’t move up all the way thanks to the new rules, but could still jump ten spots, and if they do then they keep the pick they traded to the Sabres for Jack Eichel. If you haven’t noticed, other fan bases seem to have developed a sincere hatred for Vegas, and rejoiced in watching them miss the playoffs. A lottery win here would make everybody furious, and fury is its own type of chaos.

The “Who Needs it Most?” Rankings

Everyone needs a lottery win that would hand-deliver a stud prospect, but some teams need it more than others.

Not ranked: Anaheim Ducks – You have Trevor Zegras, don’t get greedy.

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The draft lottery power rankings, Part 2

It’s draft lottery day in the NHL. Again.

We did this once already, back in June, and the results were … well, they were interesting. Having a placeholder team win the first overall pick created a bizarre scenario where the chance to pick left winger Alexis Lafreniere would be “won” by a qualifying round loser. We just didn’t know which one. Tonight, we find out.

It’s a crucially important moment because Lafreniere is an extraordinary prospect who should have an immediate impact on whichever team lands him. Now, instead of winding up on a truly needy franchise like the Red Wings or Senators, he’s going to go to a team that’s already good — and maybe very good.

That seems like something worth breaking out a ranking for. We already did this part too, back in June, when we were rooting for unintentional comedy and Team Chaos. We got our wish, but perspectives may have changed. So rather than make multiple lists, we’re just going to do one big one, covering all eight teams from a variety of angles to see if we can figure out who neutral hockey fans should be rooting for tonight.

We’re looking for five factors:

How much they need it

It’s of course true that every team in the league could use a star winger, especially one on an entry-level deal. But the whole idea behind basing draft order and lottery odds on the standings, I’m told, is that we’re supposed to want to help the very worst teams. That won’t happen this year – sorry Detroit – but we can still hope that Lafreniere doesn’t go to a team that’s already stacked, either now or in terms of their future.

How much they deserve it

A tricky category since nobody “deserves” to win a random drawing. But some teams warrant it more than others, especially the ones that haven’t had much lottery luck or don’t often pick high.

Outrage factor

It’s the nature of lotteries that whichever team wins will be happy and everyone else will be mad. But how mad? It goes without saying that the madder, the better.

League impact

Think big picture. Would this result be good news for an NHL that will have a new star to market and a revenue deficit to make up?

Alternate reality comedy potential

A unique category this year, thanks to the weird lottery setup. The league is basically drawing a series here, meaning that whichever team beat the lottery winner in the play-in round will have cost themselves Lafreniere. This will be funnier for some teams than others.

I also reserve the right to award or subtract bonus points if I see fit. Let’s see where this takes us.

8. Florida Panthers

How much they need it: 5/10. The Panthers have a ton of young talent, especially up front, led by Jonathan Huberdeau (who’s a left winger) and Aleksander Barkov. Based on their results over the years, though, there’s no question the Panthers could use some additional help.

How much they deserve it: 3/10. They’ve already won the first overall pick in the lottery three times, although they only used the pick once, trading it in 2002 and 2003. They still have Aaron Ekblad to show for their 2014 win but haven’t picked higher than tenth since then.

Outrage factor: 2/10. Minimal, even given their lottery history. There’d be the usual grumbling from hardcore Canadian traditionalists who are mad the Panthers even exist, but that’s about it.

League impact: 5/10. The Panthers are a small market, but they’re one the league would like to see on firmer ground.

Alternate reality comedy potential: 4/10. The Islanders could have used Lafreniere, and it would have been mildly amusing to watch Senators fans realize they just lost a protected first-round pick.

Bonus points: +1 for the Panthers being the only team with a history of trading the first overall pick, which would let us at least pretend there was a possibility of a draft floor blockbuster coming. But -1 for all the “Lafreniere will sell a lot of tickets when they move to Quebec” jokes.

Total: 19/50. With no high scores in any category, this would be a perfectly acceptable but not-especially-interesting result, which means nobody who isn’t a Panthers fan should be rooting for it.

7. Edmonton Oilers

How much they need it: 8/10. An elite winger to play with Connor McDavid? Yeah, I’d say they could use a guy like that.

How much they deserve it: -5/10. That’s right, minus-five. They’re already a reasonably good team, at least according to this year’s standings. Far more importantly, they’re basically the poster child for NHL lottery luck. They’ve had the first overall pick four times in the last decade, three of those thanks to lottery wins. And that includes by far the biggest lottery win of the cap era when they jumped past Buffalo and Arizona to win the Connor McDavid sweepstakes in 2015.

That was the year I did my first ever lottery rankings. Here’s what I wrote then: “Look, I’m all for fairness and integrity, but if the Oilers win the lottery, then the league absolutely has to scrap the results and run it again. Don’t even delete the footage or try to cover it up — just have Bill Daly walk into the frame screaming, ‘Take two!’ while angrily stuffing ping-pong balls back into the machine.”

Then they won, McDavid stared into the abyss on live television, and five years later he’s won one playoff round. We can’t let this happen to Lafreniere. The league absolutely needs to “forget” to put the Oilers’ ball into the machine.

Outrage factor: 10/10. People will be beyond furious. It would be kind of amazing.

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Puck Soup: Our first look at the postseason

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Our thoughts on the NHL's return, what's worked and what hasn't
- Breaking down each series
- Are we surprised that the Oilers and Penguins are on the verge of elimination?
- Matt Dumba's speech and the NHL's baby steps towards social activism
- Draft lottery, chapter two
- The best and worst Nintendo characters.
- And more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

Puck Soup: Placehold my beer

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- So that draft lottery sure was something
- Yeah, it was weird. But is that bad?
- Ranking the Lafreniere worthiness of each of the playoff teams
- Artemi Panarin weighs in as a new CBA nears
- The latest on hub cities, the biggest story in hockey that you secretly don't care about
- A new quiz
- Our favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger movies

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

The winners and losers from the NHL Draft lottery

The NHL held its annual draft lottery Friday night. Well, one of them. We’re going to need another one to figure it all out.

Did I mention this gets weird? It gets weird.

Here’s the short version: We don’t know who’ll have the first overall pick in this year’s draft because it was won by one of the placeholder teams. We’ll have to wait for the play-in round to be over, at which point the eight teams that lose will go into a second drawing. One of those teams will get the top pick and presumably use it to draft blue-chip prospect Alexis Lafreniere.

This is, it should go without saying, not how things normally work. You probably have strong thoughts about whether this is how it should work, and those views are probably heavily influenced by which team you cheer for. And that’s fair because while we still don’t know who won the first overall pick, it’s fair to say that Friday night worked out better for some than for others. So let’s try to sort it all out, as we break down the winners and losers from the strangest draft lottery in NHL history.

Loser: Detroit Red Wings

It’s a winner/loser format, and tradition says we should start with the winners and alternate from there. But since we don’t know who the winners are yet, let’s go right to the one part we can all agree on.

Detroit… ouch, man.

Look, Red Wing fans knew the odds. There was a roughly 50 percent chance this could happen. That’s the way it’s worked since 2016, and we’ve seen the last place overall team drop all the way to number four on multiple occasions, including a Colorado team in 2017 that might have been even worse than this year’s Wings. If you’re a Detroit fan and you were blindsided by what happened on Friday, you weren’t paying attention.

But that doesn’t make it any easier. This team was awful, not just losing but getting their doors blown off with regularity. They desperately need a stud prospect to build around. They need some hope. The draft lottery was all they had from about November on. And then Bill Daly flips over that card at number four, and… gut punch.

So yeah, it sucks, and there’s no way to sugar coat it. You can point out that those 2017 Avs ended up with a pretty decent kid named Cale Makar with the fourth overall pick, but that doesn’t really soften the blow.

Red Wings fans are mad, and they should be mad. They get to be unbearable for the next few days. Save them your lectures about lucking into Pavel Datsyuk or getting to watch Nicklas Lidstrom. They don’t want to hear it right now, and that’s the way it should be. This hurts, a lot.

Winner: Team Chaos

We asked for chaos. We got it.

OK, we didn’t quite get the ultimate chaos scenarios, like having all three lottery spots taken by play-in teams. But Friday’s result was a decent substitute, one that adds a new dynamic to an already unprecedented play-in round. How will it all play out? Nobody knows because none of us could have even conceived of this set of circumstances just a few months ago.

Of course, not everyone will appreciate that. Plenty of fans are shaking their heads today, wondering why the NHL couldn’t have figured out a way to just do all of this in a normal way like a normal league. We’ll get to that in a bit. But at some point, maybe you just have to accept that there’s nothing normal about 2020 and steer into the skid. The NHL held a lottery and the winning team was TBD. Be careful what you wish for.

Still, the reaction on Twitter when Bill Daly flipped that card on Friday night was glorious. And in a way, it felt like the old days. How long has it been since your timeline turned into a steady stream of people going “WHAT?” and “WOW!” and “NOOO!” over something sports-related? Too long. It was nice to see a team get to celebrate a big win again. Even if it was Team Chaos.

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The 2020 draft lottery power rankings

Every year, I look forward to writing these words: It’s time for the annual draft lottery power rankings.

And this year, I get to add a few more words to the end of that sentence that I never imagined I’d need to use.

Part… one?

Yes, this year is weird. The whole year, I mean, but also this year’s draft lottery. For the first time ever, and hopefully also the last time, we’re looking at a pandemic-related rule change that means that tonight’s lottery might only be the first of two drawings we need to figure out who’ll pick where at the draft in … well, I guess we don’t know that either. Like I said, a weird year.

If you’re not up to speed on the rules of this year’s lottery, you can do some last-minute cramming here. But the basics are that we’ll draw for the top three spots this week, based on the usual field of 15 teams, with the catch that we don’t know who eight of those teams are. If all three winning teams are from the bottom seven, then we’re done. But if one (or more) picks go to the other eight teams, we’ll have to wait for a second drawing held after the play-in round is over, at which point the eight eliminated teams will get a second lottery to see who gets those picks.

Confused? Don’t worry, everyone else is too and we’re just faking it. For our purposes here, the important thing is that we’ve got more teams than usual to consider in this year’s power rankings. As usual, we’ll be breaking down the top five teams in various categories, starting with one I’m sure we can all agree on.

The ‘Who Actually Deserves It?’ Ranking

The idea of anyone deserving to win a lottery is a funny concept, and some fans might answer “nobody.” But until we get the Gold Plan and make teams actually earn the top pick, we can at least acknowledge that some teams deserve a break more than others.

Not ranked: Pittsburgh Penguins or Edmonton Oilers — Both teams went from playoff locks to play-in question marks. If they lost in an unprecedented qualifier of questionable fairness, wouldn’t they deserve a consolation prize of some lottery luck? (Remembers the two team’s histories of picking first overall.) No they would not, screw these guys.

5. Buffalo Sabres — Do their owners deserve it? No. Does their front office? But their fan base could absolutely use some good news, so I’m putting them on the list. Yes, they already won a lottery, back in 2018. But they finished dead last that year, meaning they’ve never actually moved up in the lottery in franchise history, and they were passed for the first overall pick on two other occasions.

4. Anaheim Ducks — They’ve never picked first overall in franchise history, and only picked in the top three twice. And one of those was in 2005, when they got to spend 10 minutes thinking they might have landed Sidney Crosby before settling on Bobby Ryan.

3. Los Angeles Kings — Here’s a fun bit of trivia: The Kings won the NHL’s first-ever lottery, all the way back in 1995. But they only moved up from the seventh slot to third overall, and they used the pick on Aki Berg in a draft where Shane Doan went seventh and Jarome Iginla went 11th, so did they really win at all? They did not. And in the quarter-century since, the Kings have picked in the top five on five occasions, but never first overall, a spot they haven’t held since taking Rick Pagnutti in 1967. They’re due, is that I’m saying.

2. Ottawa Senators (via San Jose) — If the Senators win the lottery with their own pick, fine, great, congratulations on being a very bad team for the third year in a row. But if they win it with the Sharks’ pick, one they acquired in the Erik Karlsson trade that just about everyone thought they’d lost? That’s called earning it.

1. Detroit Red Wings — We don’t need to overthink this. The lottery is meant to discourage tanking, and we can debate the semantics over whether that’s what the Red Wings did this year. But the whole point of using the standings to determine draft order is to offer help to the teams that need it, and no team needs more help than a Red Wings squad that just had arguably the worst season of the cap era, and maybe beyond. And if you’re still not sold, remember that they haven’t picked in the top five in 30 years.

The ‘Which Team Needs It Most?’ Ranking

Yeah, I know, they all do, especially the team you cheer for. But some teams need the help — or just the momentary jolt of happiness — more than others.

Not ranked: Any team that finished over .500 this year — Everyone wants to win, but these teams don’t need to win.

5. New Jersey Devils — Nobody wants them to win given they’ve already had two recent first overall picks. But do they need the help? (Checks standings.) They do.

4. Ottawa Senators — They’ve added some promising pieces, but the rebuild isn’t yet at the point where Eugene Melnyk’s “five-year run of unparalleled success” seems imminent. A top-three pick or two would certainly help.

3. Detroit Red Wings — It feels weird to rank them this low, and obviously the Red Wings desperately need help. But the thing is, they need so much help that even adding Alexis Lafreniere or another top prospect is only going to move the needle so much. If they win a high pick, they’ll move from being the 31st-best team this season all the way up to the projected 31st-best next year, and maybe the year after that but I’m not sure because don’t forget there will be 32 teams by then. In the long term, the Wings need this the most. But if we’re talking right now, there are two other teams that could at least make a case.

2. Montreal Canadiens — If this list was “Which GM needs it most?” the Habs probably take top spot. But even as it stands, this a franchise that still seems to desperately want the sort of French-Canadian star they built dynasties around in the good old days. There are only so many of those guys out there, and Lafreniere might be the next one. Their draft odds won’t be great, but look on the bright side — they’re better than the odds of an underpriced offer sheet working a few years from now.

1. Buffalo Sabres — The team needs it. The new front office needs it. More than anything, the fans need it. This is a team that desperately needs some good news. And winning the draft lottery would definitely be good news, right? Uh, maybe hold that thought…

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Puck Soup: Return to play

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We react to the NHL's Return to Play plan
- Did they screw up the draft lottery? One of us actually likes it
- We're still not sure if the first round counts as the playoffs or not
- The Red Wings and Sabres stand pat
- Greg tries to say nice things about Rise of Skywalker
- A journeyman quiz
- And more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

Eight games that changed the results of the NHL draft lottery

OK,​ so maybe there​ really​ wasn’t​ a lot​ of​ suspense​ to be​ had in Tuesday’s​ draft lottery. You​ could​ have saved yourself​​ some time by just reading my preview, which correctly predicted the Devils winning the top pick. Or you could have skipped that too and just known which team Taylor Hall plays for.

Hall is Mr. Lottery, a fact he’s embraced over the years and was quick to remind us of that night:

They talk about Gretzky’s 92 goals or Sittler’s 10 pts in one game as records that may never be broken. But winning 5 draft lotteries in your first 9 years in the league? In 2 different draft lottery eras, no less. That is a record that will stand forever.

— Taylor Hall (@hallsy09) April 10, 2019

It’s possible that Hall is just unstoppable, and nothing could have prevented the lottery from playing out the way it did. Then again, maybe you don’t buy into that particular brand of superstition.

If so, then you’ve come to the right place, because it’s time for the annual round of “Find a single game from the season that would have changed the lottery outcome.”

This has been kind of a hobby of mine over the years. For every draft lottery, once you know who won, you can look back and find games from that season that altered the results. The most memorable example is probably the infamous Patrik Stefan flub, which ended up sending Patrick Kane to the Blackhawks instead of the Oilers. Edmonton’s win in the last game ever played at Rexall Place ended up costing them Auston Matthews. A late Geoff Sanderson goal in 2004 cost the Blue Jackets the Alexander Ovechkin pick.

You can do this all day. It’s fun. Or, depending on your perspective and how close your team came to a franchise-altering lottery win, extremely un-fun.

First, let’s explain what we’re even talking about. Many fans assume that the NHL draft lottery just involves a barrel full of ping pong balls with each team’s logo on them. That would be the easy way to do it, but the league is looking for more control over the odds. So instead, they use 14 numbered balls, and draw four of them. That gives them 1,001 combinations, which they assign in advance to the qualifying teams. (You can read about the whole process on this page; the actual number combos can be found here; these were the actual winners.)

Those combinations are handed out based on the final standings, which means that it’s not really teams that are winning or losing the lottery at all – it’s spots in the standings. There are three winners every year, and this year the lucky slots were 29th, 26th and 20th. Whichever teams were holding down those spots were going to win. We just didn’t know that until Tuesday night.

(I’ll pause here to acknowledge that you can get into some “time traveler steps on a butterfly” arguments here, where changing the results of one game ends up impacting other things that happen in the future. If you feel very strongly about this and won’t be able to enjoy this premise because of it, I encourage you to go argue philosophy in the comment section of a Mirtle article while the rest of us have a little fun here.)

Some years, there’s no single game that would change a certain result. For example, in the Connor McDavid lottery in 2015, no team was even within five points of the Oilers on either side, so they could have won or lost a few extra games without changing anything. But other years, we get plenty of what if scenarios.

This is one of those years. By my count, there are 12 teams that could have won or lost one of the three lottery draws based on changing the outcome of just one game on their schedule. So that’s what we’re going to do today. Here are some of the (many) games from the 2018-19 season that could have altered the result of Tuesday’s draft lottery.

Arizona Coyotes – March 26

The Coyotes finished with 86 points, two up on Chicago for that winning No. 20 spot. But they also would have held the ROW tiebreaker, so just having them lose an extra game doesn’t do it. No, we have to flip the results of a game where they beat the Blackhawks. And luckily, we have two to choose from.

The first was a 4-1 win in Chicago on Oct. 18. But all else being equal we prefer more recent games – less time for those butterflies to get stepped on, and all – so let’s go with March 26. On that night, the Hawks and Coyotes went into the third period locked in a 0-0 tie. Arizona’s Nick Cousins banged home a rebound to make it 1-0, and the lead held up for a regulation win.

If the Hawks get that first goal instead and win the game, the Coyotes end up dropping to 20th, and they’re holding the lucky combo to move up to the third-overall pick. Instead, they’re picking 14th, all because of one game.

See how this works? Fun, right? Trust me, it’s going to get so much worse.

Florida Panthers and Buffalo Sabres – November 30

The Panthers finished tied with the Coyotes but make for an easier case because they wouldn’t have owned the tiebreaker against the Hawks, meaning all we have to do is turn any ROW into a regulation loss. Meanwhile, the Sabres finished two points back of the Rangers and held that tiebreaker, so they move into a winning spot with one additional regulation win. That gives us plenty of games to choose from, but it’s always fun to try to change two results with one game, and we get a chance to do that here.

We’ll head back to Nov. 30, as the Sabres visit the Panthers in Florida. The night before had seen Buffalo’s 10-game win streak come to an end at the hands of the Lightning, so you could expect a bit of a letdown for a tired road team on short rest. And indeed, the Panthers largely dominated the game, outshooting Buffalo 43-24. But Linus Ullmark stood on his head, and the Sabres held a 2-1 lead late in the third. That’s when Casey Nelson took a high-sticking penalty, and the Panthers converted on the power play to tie the game and send it to overtime, where Aleksander Barkov would win it.

If the Sabres manage to hold onto their lead, they win in regulation and end up finishing 26th and winning the second-overall pick, while the Panthers drop down to 20th and pick third. Two teams, two high picks, both gone because of one game.

Keep your sticks down, kids.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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The 2019 draft lottery power rankings

It’s​ draft lottery night​ in​ the​ NHL,​ and​ if​ it feels​ a little early to​ be saying that,​ well,​ that’s because it​​ is. The league has moved the drawing up this year, abandoning the usual slot as pre-game entertainment during the first round to give the ping pong balls a night to themselves in the spotlight.

There are 15 teams in the running, with odds ranging from the Avalanche (via Ottawa) at 18.5 percent to the Canadiens at just one percent; you can find the odds for all 15 teams right here. We’ve spent most of the year looking at this as the Jack Hughes draft, and it still seems headed that way even as Kaapo Kakko has pushed his way into the conversation. If you count Kakko as a second can’t-miss prospect at the top of the draft, that just makes tonight’s lottery all the more important. Remember, the top three spots are all up for grabs under the new format introduced in 2016.

With that much on the line, we’re going to need more than a list of percentages to get prepared. So as we count down the hours until the big reveal, let’s take a look at the contenders from various angles with the annual Draft Lottery Power Rankings.

The “Which Team Needs It Most?” Ranking

Every team needs a Jack Hughes or a Kaapo Kakko. But some teams need them more than others.

Not ranked: Ottawa Senators – I mean, they clearly need a top prospect. It’s just that … yeah … about that…

5. Buffalo Sabres – This team needs help pretty much anywhere, not to mention some reason for optimism, and adding Hughes or Kakko to Jack Eichel and Rasmus Dahlin would provide both. Besides, who better to take advantage of multiple lottery wins than reported next head coach Todd McLellan?

4. Los Angeles Kings – They’re old and bad and don’t have much going for them beyond California winters.

3. Anaheim Ducks – They’re old and bad and don’t have much going for them beyond California winters and not being the Kings.

2. Edmonton Oilers – They could certainly use a winger, which would make Kakko a viable option even if they land the top pick. But more importantly, they need some good news in a town where fans, media, and even the franchise player are all sick of losing. Besides, it would be the first time that the Oilers winning a draft lottery made Connor McDavid happy.

1. Detroit Red Wings – They have a new arena to fill and might be looking to attract a new GM – potentially one who suddenly has his eye on some other job. And while they’ve got Dylan Larkin and some solid youth on the way, it’s been a long time since they’ve drafted a sure-thing prospect, especially at center.

Add it all up, and no team would see their outlook shoot up more with a lottery win. Luckily they’ve had a bad year so their odds are great, according to fans who stopped watching with three weeks to go in the season.

The “Who Actually Deserves It?” Rankings

Nobody deserves it, because we continue to rely on random ping pong balls instead of the vastly superior Gold Plan, under which teams would actually have to earn the top pick. But since that would be fun and cool and therefore out of the question for today’s NHL, let’s do our best to figure out if there’s anyone we should be rooting for more than anyone else.

Not ranked: Edmonton Oilers – We’re all on the same page here? Cool, just making sure.

5. Los Angeles Kings – The point of the draft is to help bad teams, and the worst of the teams that still have their pick.

4. New York Rangers – They’re rebuilding, but doing it with a Hall of Fame goalie, so it’s not like you can say that they’re tanking. They haven’t picked in the top three in over 50 years, and have also never won a lottery. In fact, the only time they show up in the story of lottery history is to note that they once traded for a winning pick and then used it to select Pavel Brendl. That alone should probably entitle them to a little bit of karma.

3. Montreal Canadiens – They weren’t just the last team eliminated, they actually finished ahead of three Western playoff teams. That has to warrant a little bit of luck, right?

2. Detroit Red Wings – In an alternate universe where we do use the Gold Plan, the Red Wings’ hot streak to end the season means they would have held off the Kings for top spot.

1. Colorado Avalanche – This is usually a tough category to crown a winner in, but not this year. The Avalanche are the only team that can claim that they’ve earned their shot at the top pick not by losing, but by outsmarting another team. They didn’t tank, because they didn’t have to. They outsourced the job to somebody who could do it better.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Podcast: Shipping down to Boston

In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
In a new and jam-packed Vice Biscuits podcast:
- Lots of Leafs/Bruins talk
- Is Dave still driving the Capitals' bandwagon?
- We make our picks for the other second-round series
- The Flames hire Bill Peters
- The Wild fire Chuck Fletcher
- A look ahead to the draft lottery
- Plus DOPS, the Sedins, reader questions and lots more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.

The 2018 draft lottery power rankings

We’re headed towards the second round of the playoffs, where eight teams will continue their quest to play for the Stanley Cup in June. But for almost half the league, the season culminates on Saturday. That’s when we’ll get the annual draft lottery, in which all the league’s non-playoff teams gather to find out which ones will luck their way into top-three picks at this year’s entry draft.

After last year’s Nolan-vs.-Nico debate, we’re back to having a clear-cut first-overall pick. Rasmus Dahlin will be the first defenceman taken with the top pick since Aaron Ekblad in 2014, and he’s already being hyped as the sort of prospect who could turn a struggling franchise around. That’s good news, because there are plenty of struggling franchises to be found. Fifteen teams are entered in this year’s lottery, and all of them will be hoping their logo comes up in the top spot. Well, all of them except one. We’ll get to that.

You can find the full set of weighted odds here. This is the third year under the new system, in which the top three spots are up for grabs and teams can move all the way up if the ping pong balls bounce their way.

The first year of the system saw a predictable outcome, when last-place Toronto kept the top spot. Last year was big for the long shots, with the worst four teams all falling out of the top three. What will this year bring? We don’t know yet, but we’ll take our annual look at the possibilities from a few different angles.

The “Which Team Needs It Most?” Ranking

We’ll start with the obvious category. Every team that missed the playoffs would love to add Dahlin — heck, every team in the league would. But some teams certainly need him more than others.

Not ranked: Florida Panthers: No doubt they’d love to add a talent like Dahlin. But they’re already a good young team built around a No. 1–overall pick on the blueline.

5. Arizona Coyotes: After suffering through yet another miserable year, they head into the last year of Oliver Ekman-Larsson‘s deal wondering what the future might look like without him. The answer is probably “not good,” but adding another elite offensive defenceman would help.

4. Vancouver Canucks: Between Brock Boeser and Elias Pettersson, the future looks reasonably bright up front, and Thatcher Demko appears to be the goalie of the future. But with Olli Juolevi off to a somewhat-underwhelming start, the defence could use a future stud. (Also, can we talk about how weird it is that the Canucks have been around for nearly 50 years and have never really had an elite defenceman?)

3. Buffalo Sabres: Their blue line is terrible, and there isn’t much in the way of elite help coming from their prospect pipeline beyond maybe Brendan Guhle. Plus, their fans are completely miserable and could desperately use some good news.

2. Ottawa Senators: Despite half-hearted denials, the Erik Karlsson situation seems set to drag on into the off-season. Adding an elite Swedish blueliner might help nudge Karlsson towards sticking around. And even if it didn’t, there’s no better way to ease the pain of losing today’s Karlsson than by adding the next version.

1. Edmonton Oilers: Yes, I know, the thought of the Oilers winning yet another lottery is a touchy one, and we’ll get to that. But they’ve been chasing a top blueline presence for years, and adding Dahlin to the Connor McDavid show for the next decade would just about guarantee a Stanley Cup or two. Nobody could screw that up. [Thinks for a minute.] Almost nobody could screw that up.

The “Who Actually Deserves It?” Rankings

The short answer: Nobody, since we’re relying on a system of ping pong balls and random chance that’s designed to reward failure. Here’s the longer answer.

Not ranked: Chicago Blackhawks: Yes, yes, your Stanley Cup mini-dynasty finally missed the playoffs for the first time in a decade. Hearts are breaking for you all around the league.

5. Ottawa Senators: The team itself probably doesn’t deserve it, given the mess they’ve made of just about everything over the course of the season. But the fan base? Yeah, they could probably use a break these days.

4. New York Islanders: They make the list for pretty much the same reasons as the Senators. But we’ll move them one spot higher, since a lottery win will help ease the pain when John Tavares signs with the Rangers.

3. Arizona Coyotes: They haven’t had much lottery luck, missing out on McDavid and local boy Auston Matthews among others. They were this year’s worst team early on, with a record-setting start that had them out of contention by November, and you could have forgiven them for going in the tank to protect their top odds. Instead, they won their way up a few spots in the standings. It would be nice to see that rewarded.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Making the case for each lottery team to trade their first round pick

Once the ping pong balls had stopped bouncing and Saturday’s draft-lottery announcement was complete, we knew two things: 1) That the hockey gods hate the Colorado Avalanche, and 2) The order for this year’s top 15 picks. The bottom half of the draft is still sorting itself out in the playoffs, but the top half is locked in.

Well, at least for now.

While the order is set in stone, the picks themselves could still change hands via trade. This year’s first round has been unusually stable as far as deals go. Only two picks have changed hands, with the Blues getting Washington’s pick in the Kevin Shattenkirk deal and the Coyotes getting Minnesota’s for Martin Hanzal. (A third pick is still up in the air, as the Stars could still get Anaheim’s first from the Patrick Eaves trade.)

That said, "easy" isn’t necessarily fun, and we like to have some fun around here. In what's expected to be a weaker draft, maybe this is the year that we can talk some GMs into shopping their picks. So today, let's see if we can make a case for each of the lottery teams to trade its first-round pick. This will get tougher as we get closer to the first-overall pick, so we'll start out easy and work our way up to it.

Pick No. 15: New York Islanders

The case for a trade: The Islanders just endured a disappointing season, following up their first playoff series win in 23 years by missing the playoffs and firing their coach. But they only missed the wild card by one point, so it's not like they're a candidate for a full-on reset.

Maybe more importantly, this is a team that has some serious incentive to win now. They're looking for a new arena deal, and those can be easier to come by when you've got some positive momentum to build on. There's also the John Tavares situation; the Islanders' franchise player is eligible to sign an extension on July 1, and he may not be interested in spending what's left of his prime treading water for a middle-of-the-pack team.

Add it all up, and mix in some new ownership that's going to want to see some progress, and waiting around two or three years for another prospect to be ready is going to be a hard sell for Garth Snow.

Does it hold up?: It's a pretty solid case. It's not like Snow is going to be able to land a superstar for a mid-round pick in a weak draft, but using the 15th choice as an asset in a deal would make a lot of sense.

Pick No. 14: Tampa Bay Lightning

The case for a trade: We all figured they were Stanley Cup contenders, and maybe they still are. But after a season where just about everything went wrong, their window seems a lot smaller than most of us thought. Trading their top pick for immediate help would make a lot of sense, especially since anyone they draft from this spot isn't likely to be a difference-maker any time soon.

Does it hold up?: On the surface, sure. But the problem in Tampa is the salary cap, where Steve Yzerman barely has enough room to handle all the guys on his current roster. Adding another veteran would be tricky, so while the Lightning's focus should be on right now, Yzerman may not have any choice but to bank this pick for down the line.

Pick No. 13: Winnipeg Jets

The case for a trade: This year's Jets season played out just like all the others since the team's return — lots of young talent and plenty of potential, but, ultimately, zero playoff wins. Kevin Cheveldayoff has been preaching patience for years now, but at some point you need to start winning.

Fans in Winnipeg are among the most loyal in the league, but they've been looking one or two years down the road for six seasons now. The team needs to take a step forward someday. If not now, when?

Does it hold up?: You'd think so. Dangling the team's top pick – maybe for goaltending help — seems like a reasonable play. But no team in the league has been more reluctant to make big trades than Cheveldayoff and the Jets, so let's file this one under "unlikely."

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Podcast: Draft lottery edition

In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
- People are mad about the draft lottery, which I argue is the most NHL reaction possible
- Dave and I are very sorry about spoiling the results ahead of time
- I have a minor conspiracy theory about the Vegas Golden Knights that I manage to convince Dave of
- We look at the first round so far
- We do not talk about the Crosby hit because we recorded yesterday
- Reader questions
- And lots more...

>> Stream it now on Vice Sports

>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.