Montreal Canadiens: Possible casualty of the 2018 NHL Draft Lottery
By Omar L
It’s less than a week for that important Saturday for the Montreal Canadiens, and although they’re in a decent spot Draft Lottery-wise, things can go amiss.
There are three things for followers of the Montreal Canadiens to do after the regular season ended. Catch some playoff hockey without any emotional ties, frantically search the internet for news, and fall into the rabbit hole of draft lottery simulators. It’s incredible how addicting those things can get, and an hour later you find yourself with 100 trials and a half-smile across your face.
Sites such as Tankathan are probably going to get their highest amount of traffic this upcoming week with the actual event set for this Saturday. A number of teams aren’t happy to be in the position they are while others have ‘worked’ for this all season. The Habs are somewhere in the middle. Obviously, it was a disappointment to finish so low, but with Rasmus Dahlin being an option, the opportunity to win the right to draft him was welcomed warmly.
There haven’t been any changes to the lottery odds. As the Habs finished 28th in the league, they have a 9.5% chance at winning and acquiring the rights to select first in Dallas. However, if you’ve been running the simulator a lot, you may have noticed something weird. The Montreal Canadiens fell to the fifth spot a lot more often than they remained at fourth or jumped to first.
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After doing a quick ten trial run, the results remained somewhat consistent with that pattern:
- First Overall: 1 time
- Second Overall: 2 times
- Third Overall: 1 time
- Fifth Overall: 4 times
- Sixth Overall: 2 times
Ironically, Tankathan had the answers for that. Forgetting about the odds for first for a second, the Montreal Canadiens have only a 2.8% chance to stay at fourth but a 26.1% and 34% chance to drop to fifth and sixth respectively. It seems unfair on the surface. However, the Habs have better odds to fall further in the draft then jump up (the beauty of lotteries).
I hope by bringing this up, it’s a weird way to reverse jynx the events of Saturday in Montreal’s favour.
Another thing to mention that is a little more positive are the Habs’ chances after the first overall lottery is won. When that happens, it’s kept a secret until the end, so no one knows who the winner is. But if a different team gets it, Montreal’s odds to win the second lottery slightly increase to 9.6% and 9.7% for the third.
Next: Strategy for the 2018 NHL Draft
Not the greatest boost, but an increase is an increase. Fingers crossed that the magic balls of franchise calibre potential fall the Montreal Canadiens way.