NHL Makes Draft Lottery Changes
On Wednesday, the NHL announced a new, two-year implementation plan for an enhanced Draft Lottery system that will begin in 2015.
The lottery will include the picks of the 14 teams that failed to quality for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. From NHL.com, here are the changes:
2015 NHL Draft Lottery
The odds of winning the first overall selection in the NHL Draft for the 14 non-Playoff teams will be adjusted to more appropriately reflect the current state of competitive balance in the League. This will result in a more evenly-balanced allocation of odds, with the 10 highest-finishing non-Playoff qualifying teams receiving higher (better) Draft Lottery odds than they received previously and the four lowest-finishing teams receiving lower (worse) odds. The revised set of odds will remain in effect year-to-year in the future.
2016 NHL Draft Lottery
Beginning in 2016, the Draft Lottery will be utilized to assign the top three drafting slots in the NHL Draft, an expansion over previous years when the Draft Lottery was used to determine the winner of the first overall selection only.
Three draws will be held: the 1st Lottery draw will determine the Club selecting first overall, the 2nd Lottery draw will determine the Club selecting second overall and the 3rd Lottery draw will determine the club selecting third overall.
As a result of this change, the team earning the fewest points during the regular season will no longer be guaranteed, at worst, the second overall pick. That club could fall as low as fourth overall.
The allocation of odds for the 1st Lottery draw will be the same as outlined above for the 2015 NHL Draft Lottery. The odds for the remaining teams will increase on a proportionate basis for the 2nd Lottery draw, based on which Club wins the 1st Lottery draw, and again for the 3rd Lottery draw, based on which Club wins the 2nd Lottery draw.
The 11 Clubs not selected in the Draft Lottery will be assigned NHL Draft selections 4 through 14, in inverse order of regular-season points.
Kevin Hayes got his deal with the Rangers. I am interested to see the type of player he becomes. I am going to side with the Blackhawks perspective of him until he proves he belongs in the league. The Hawks seem to be fairly shrewd evaluators of talent…
Peter, what does that have to do with the lottery?
I really dont understand when leagues adopt this phlisophy. Give the worst team the top pick its that easy. So on and so forth.
@SouthSideHawkMan – Two words: Edmonton Oilers
@SSHM – a lottery is supposed to discourage tanking. In a year where there’s as much hype over the top couple picks in the draft, it would be REAL easy for a team to field an AHL-caliber roster and win 10 games just to land the supposed-Next Sidney. With that being said, look at how well the NBA Draft Lottery has mixed it up there (Cleveland has won it how many times since LeBron left?)… I like that they’re changing the lottery to be for the top 3 picks. It means the worst record isn’t guaranteed anything but a top-4 pick.
But the draft lottery is like the salary cap floor. You can force teams to spend/award them better picks, but you can’t force them to make good decisions. Some teams spend a lot of money and get little for it; some teams (cough… EDM…) have high picks every year and can’t even make the playoffs.
What about putting the draft odds on a bell curve. Having the odds fluctuate somehow between the first and last place teams. Say you have 4 teams with a similar games behind mark as compared to the first place team. Those teams get similar odds. Rather than having the odds jump slightly throughout the first 14 picks, the odds could jump greatly. Typically teams just barely miss the playoffs, and teams that laid an egg. Not a lot of middle, so why not have the odds show that.
My opinion – this is a better system. Hopefully it doesn’t matter to Hawks fans for a long time.
E R – Well said and I second that hope.
E.R. nailed it…