Selection Order and Draft Lottery
The selection order in the Entry Draft is determined by a combination of lottery, regular season standing, and playoff results. However, teams are permitted to trade draft picks. In all cases, the team considered is the original holder of the draft pick, not a team which may have acquired the pick via a trade or other means. It has been claimed that the lottery system was introduced after the Ottawa Senators were suspected of having deliberately lost games in order to draft Alexandre Daigle in 1993.
At the conclusion of the regular season, the 14 NHL teams not qualifying for the playoffs are entered in a weighted lottery to determine the initial draft picks in the first round, seeded according to regular season standing. The 30th-place team has the best chance of winning the lottery while the 29th-place team has a 18.8% chance of winning, with odds diminishing to a 0.5% chance for the 17th-place team. A single selection from the lottery pool is made, with the winning team improving its draft position to the number 1 spot, and no team dropping more than one place.
The remaining order is determined by the Stanley Cup playoff results. Whichever team wins the Stanley Cup is awarded the 30th and last pick, while the runner-up is given the 29th pick. The teams eliminated in the conference finals are awarded the 28th and 27th picks, with the 28th pick going to the team with the better regular season record. Remaining division winners are then sorted by points, then the rest of the field are ranked next, filling in the 26th through 15th picks. In both cases, better records result in later picks.
When teams lose their rights to a first round draft choice, because that player was not signed to a contract and consequently re-entered the entry draft or became an unrestricted free agent, they are awarded a compensatory draft pick. This selection will be the same numerical choice as the first round draft pick who was not signed, but in the second round. For example, if a team cannot sign the seventh overall first round draft choice, it will receive the seventh pick in the second round of the next draft as compensation.
Read more about this topic: National Hockey League Entry Draft
Famous quotes containing the words selection, order, draft and/or lottery:
“The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All things being equal, I would choose a woman over a man in order to even the balance of power, to insinuate a different perspective into the process, to give young women something to shoot for and someone to look up to. But all things are rarely equal.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”
—Malcolm X (1925–1965)
“The recent attempt to secure a charter from the State of North Dakota for a lottery company, the pending effort to obtain from the State of Louisiana a renewal of the charter of the Louisiana State Lottery, and the establishment of one or more lottery companies at Mexican towns near our border, have served the good purpose of calling public attention to an evil of vast proportions.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)