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This year, the NHL Draft Lottery will be televised on May 5 live on Sportsnet, TVA and ESPN, while the lottery itself will be held in the NHL's New Jersey studio. The time has yet to be announced.

The owners of the first-round picks of all 16 teams who did not qualify for the playoffs are participants in the draft lottery. The current owner of the pick is determined by trades and the finalized conditions on the trades, so for the purposes of the lottery, Toronto is the owner of their own pick, at least when it starts, they are.

There are two lotteries for the top two places in the draft. Under the revised rules for recent years, a team can only move up 10 places. Only the top 11 teams (top being the Vancouver Canucks and on down to the St. Louis Blues) can get the first-overall pick, and only the top 12 teams can get the second-overall pick.

The lottery is a draw of a four-digit number. To make life easy, the NHL has designated a combination of balls (11, 12, 13, 14)* as an automatic redraw, reducing the number of combinations to 1,000 so the numbers are easier to allocate.

*from last season's official rules

Each team has a set of randomly generated number combinations assigned to them before the draw. It's used for both draws.

This is the table of teams, their odds, and the number of number combinations they are assigned:

Teams (Fewest Points to Most) Odds Combinations (out of 1,000)
Vancouver Canucks 18.5% 185
Chicago Blackhawks 13.5% 135
New York Rangers 11.5% 115
Calgary Flames 9.5% 95
Toronto Maple Leafs (cond. to BOS) * 8.5% 85
Seattle Kraken 7.5% 75
Winnipeg Jets 6.5% 65
Florida Panthers 6.0% 60
San Jose Sharks 5.0% 50
Nashville Predators 3.5% 35
St. Louis Blues 3.0% 30
New Jersey Devils 2.5% 25
New York Islanders 2.0% 20
Columbus Blue Jackets 1.5% 15
St. Louis Blues (from DET) 0.5% 5
Washington Capitals 0.5% 5

If the Toronto pick ends up outside the top five, it will be transferred to Boston.

First Draw

A four-number combination is drawn. If one of the top 11 teams has that number combination, they get the first-overall pick. If the winning team is outside the top 11, they move up 10 slots, and the first overall selection goes to the top-seeded team - the Canucks. The winning team in this case is then locked into position and cannot move up in the second draw. The Canucks are then locked into the first overall in that case.

If the winning team is within the top 11, they are locked into the first-overall position.

All the number combinations held by the winning team become "re-draw combinations" for the second draw. The number combinations held by the Canucks stay in the second draw if they are locked into first overall because a team outside the top 11 won the first draw, but not if they won it themselves.

Second Draw

Once the second number combination is drawn, several potential scenarios result.

If the Canucks have the first-overall-pick because the winner of the first draw was outside the top 11, and the Canucks win the second draw, they stay in the first-overall position and the remainder of the draft order defaults to the seeding of the 16 teams in the table above. Teams slot in around the locked-in winner of the first draw.

If the first draw locked a team into the second-overall position, then the winner of the second draw moves up to the best "unlocked" position they can get to, capped at 10 places. And then all other teams are slotted in around these locked in teams.

If the second-overall position is open, then the winner of the second draw gets that spot if they are in the top 12 seeds, otherwise, they move up 10 spots, and the teams slot into unlocked locations as per the seeding order.

All of that actually makes more sense when you watch the on-screen graphic on the draft broadcast.

Odds

This more complex lottery system was adopted in 2021 to increase the odds that the top seeded teams got the top picks. The Leafs' odds of getting a top-five pick are higher in this format than any prior lottery format.

No matter how many times a four-number combination has to be drawn, and with re-draw scenarios, it can be more than twice, the chance of the Leafs holding the winning combination stays at 8.5% every time.

The path to the desired outcome – Toronto maintaining the pick by coming somewhere in the top five after both draws – is the following:

  1. In the first draw, one of six teams must win, one of the top five or the Washington Capitals at 16th. If any of those teams win, Toronto stays at either fifth or wins it and is first. If any other team wins the first draw, it's (almost) over, and Boston gets the pick. If this happens, the Leafs have to win the second draw to keep the pick. [fixed now because I failed to imagine them really winning a draw]
  2. The best-to-worst case scenarios for the second draw if one of those six teams wins the first draw are:
    1. Toronto wins the first draw and we turn the broadcast off.
    2. Washington wins the first draw and the five teams with the highest odds of winning remain in the second lottery.
    3. Calgary wins the first draw and the four highest odds holders are still in.
    4. New York, then Chicago then Vancouver in order from best case to worst round out the order.
  3. If any team from Seattle at sixth to St. Louis at 15th (the pick they have from Detroit) wins the second lottery it's over and Boston gets the pick.

Just a note, Toronto cannot come fourth, but there is a tiny chance of coming third if the right combination of draws occurs.

Two weeks from today, we'll have the answer.

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OffseasonNHL Draft