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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Grab Bag: Week one thoughts, a lottery idea and Tocchet spaghetti

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- My thoughts on the first week of the NHL's risky return
- A modest proposal for how to handle the draft lottery reveal
- An obscure player who did his best work in the playoffs
- Weird goalies in the comedy stars
- And Rick Tocchet makes spaghetti in a YouTube classic

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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.

A fan’s guide to how worried you should be after four days

It’s the postseason. Time to worry.

After all, that’s half the fun during this time of year. And by “fun” I mean that you spend days or weeks or months curled up in a little ball with your eyes shut tight while you make little squeaky whimpering noises. So, not fun at all, I guess.

But postseason misery comes in different forms, and not all worry is created equal. There’s the general sense of low-level trepidation when things are going reasonably well and you’re trying to figure out what the hockey gods are setting you up for. There are zones in the middle, where the glass is half full right before you throw it through your TV screen. And then there’s the full-on existential dread, where things are awful and you’re just trying to figure out how they’ll get worse, and you question why you ever decided to like this team and this sport in the first place.

We’ve all been there. But it’s important to pace yourself and make sure you’re in the right spot. I don’t get to tell you where that is, but I’ve been doing this long enough that I can at least offer up some advice.

Here’s where I’d suggest everyone should be, four whole days into a postseason that’s going to last two more months for some of you, and maybe just a few more hours for others.

Worry level: Low

Fans of all the teams who aren’t here

How are you all enjoying this? Has it been enjoyable? I bet it’s been kind of enjoyable.

The dirty secret of hockey fandom is that having your team miss the playoffs sucks, but watching the playoffs when your team isn’t in them is kind of awesome. You can hate-watch a few teams, bandwagon a couple more if you’re up for it or just work the remote and cheer for overtime. It kind of rules.

Am I speaking from experience? Way too much of it, thanks for asking.

Lightning, Flyers, Avalanche and Golden Knights

That would be the four teams in the round robin who’ve opened with a win. Wins are good. You want to start strong and get a little momentum, and with just three games to play in this mini-tournament, an early win is pretty much mandatory if you want to finish first in the conference and grab the top seed.

Will that top seed matter? Probably not, since you could still end up facing a tougher matchup, but every little bit helps and securing home ice and last change is a little bit. And at least it’s fun to say that it’s the postseason and you’re riding a winning streak that’s lasted almost five months.

New York Islanders

They are who we thought they were, at least so far. In other words, they’re a very well-coached team that won’t blow you away with skill or clog up a highlight reel, but know how to shut down an opponent and turn a game into the kind they want to play. They embarrassed the Penguins with a sweep last year, and now find themselves two-thirds of the way to giving the Panthers the same treatment.

As long as Mathew Barzal can avoid doing any more headers into the boards that briefly gave everyone a heart attack, there hasn’t been much for Islander fans to worry about yet. Take advantage of it while it lasts.

New York Rangers

Good job, good effort. Enjoy a few weeks of Alexis Lafreniere highlights.

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Weekend power rankings: Yes, a playoff edition. Yes, based on one game.

I wouldn’t normally do this.

A weekend power ranking in the playoffs, I mean. It never really made sense. The whole idea behind the weekly rankings is to try to crack the puzzle of separating the contenders from the also-rans and then, the hopeless bottom-feeders. By the time the regular season ends, we pretty much have our answers. The bottom of the standings are set, and while we don’t know who’ll win the Cup, we’ve at least narrowed the field down the 16 playoff-worthy teams. And once the first round starts, a lot of what we think we know gets exposed, so you may as well just enjoy the ride.

So yeah, normally this would make no sense. But as you may have noticed, normal went out the window a long time ago. I don’t usually spend a long weekend in August nailed to my couch watching postseason hockey, but I just did that, and you probably did too. And I’m pretty pumped about it, so screw normal, let’s welcome the NHL back with a weekend power ranking.

If you’re new to this feature, it typically runs every week during the regular season and has an impeccable track record of accuracy. It also usually comes with a disclaimer about how we’re trying to predict the future, not necessarily react to the past, and one or two games shouldn’t be enough to cause wild swings in the rankings. But in the playoffs, or whatever we’re calling this week, well … swing away, right? If there was ever a time to overreact to one game, it turns out that it’s August.

The NHL just served up a weekend featuring upsets, highlights, multiple penalty shots, a few scraps, big injuries, several questionable hits and one suspension. We have one game to work with, it feels good to be back, let’s do this.

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed towards a summer November of keg stands and (socially distanced) fountain pool parties.

Let’s start with a spoiler that probably won’t spoil much: My top five are all teams that are in the round robin. That only makes sense – they’ve all got a guaranteed ticket to the next round, while the play-in teams have to fight it out for their opportunity. Also, they’re the best teams, at least in theory, although that may not end up mattering much.

By the way, we all agree that the round robin is a screwed-up way to determine seeding, right? I get that you want the games to matter so that everyone isn’t just going through the motions in glorified exhibitions, but we kind of just rendered the whole regular season meaningless. The right way to do it would have been to have the three round-robin games count towards the points the teams already had, so the Flyers could pass the Capitals without it being possible for the Stars to make up 12 points on the Blues in a week. Sorry Bruins, enjoy being the first Presidents’ Trophy winners in NHL history to be a four-seed.

5. Philadelphia Flyers – Beating a good Bruins team in a semi-meaningful game isn’t enough to move them past Boston on my list of contenders, but it does earn them a top-five spot, at least until teams like Caps and Stars get to play. I was leaning towards putting the Knights in this spot, but I’ll wait until I see more of them. Well, more of them in a game, I mean, since I think I’ve seen that iPhone ad roughly 400 times already.

4. St. Louis Blues – They didn’t look great last night, but let’s look on the bright side: They played a bad game against an excellent opponent and were still 0.1 seconds away from earning at least a point. That’s the sign of a good team. Well, that and the whole “defending champions” thing.

3. Boston Bruins – At this point, we don’t know what’s going on with Tuukka Rask, but the indications are that it’s not serious. That’s good; seeing him get into a game would be better. The Bruins still have a week before worrying about Round 1, and while they’d probably like a higher seed than a lower one, I’m not sure it matters all that much to them. It sure didn’t look like it did yesterday.

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