With the 2018 NHL Draft Lottery set to take place tonight in Toronto, there are some things Montreal Canadiens fans should know.
Are you gearing up for the NHL Draft Lottery tonight? It’s a yearly event that is a game-changer for a different NHL team every year (unless you’re the Edmonton Oilers). Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Taylor Hall, Auston Matthews, Patrick Kane, and Sidney Crosby are all products of lottery balls falling the right way for a lucky franchise. It doesn’t always take one player to turn the tide in a city, but a special one does wonders, and the Montreal Canadiens are hoping to get the same fortunes.
This has probably one of the longest days for you if you’re one of the people counting down the days. As you continue to prepare mentally and emotionally, here is a last minute refresher of things to know ahead of the Draft Lottery.
1. There are three lotteries and not only the one for first overall.
Prior to the 2015/16 season, only one team won the lottery granting them the ability to pick first in the following draft. However, the 2016 Draft Lottery had an alteration that made the second and third overall picks eligible to be won as well.
The team who finished last, this year being the Buffalo Sabres have the best odds to pick first at 18.5% followed by the Ottawa Senators at 13.5% and Arizona Coyotes at 11.5%. After the first lottery is won, the team with the second-best odds have the greatest chance to win next lottery and so on.
The best way to tell if a team won a lottery or not is whether they appear in the rankings in the order of their position in the standings. The Montreal Canadiens have a 9.5% chance to win after finishing 28th in the NHL. If another team appears in the fourth hole, then the Habs won one of the three lotteries and will get a top-three pick.
2. The event is getting stretched out.
Usually, the entire lottery takes place ahead of Hockey Night in Canada coverage. To keep the suspense, they’ll have some kind of commercial break after pick number four is revealed, and then the final three claim their prizes. This year will be different.
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Whoever runs the number probably noticed that viewers tune in for the lottery then change the channel after all the picks are revealed. To combat that, only picks 15-4 will be revealed before the game. The grand finale won’t take place until the second intermission of the game, this being the Game 2 between the Vegas Golden Knights and San Jose Sharks.
So keep those lucky items with you for the majority of the night if the Montreal Canadiens are in the top three.
3. How does the thing even work?
The results from the lottery are televised and posted online for the entire world to see. However, the actual ‘work’ with all the balls takes place behind closed doors. Every team is given a set of number combinations which would indicate a victory. The lower a team was in the standings, the higher number of combinations a team is given which equates to their lottery odds. For example, if Buffalo has say nine winning combinations, Montreal will only have five.
Four balls with a single digit on them will be selected at random, and the team who has the matching combination wins the first lottery. Those steps are repeated for picks two and three.
4. History of the lottery for the Montreal Canadiens
The draft lottery has been an annual event since 1995. The first team to win were the Los Angeles Kings who had the seventh-best odds. However, the rule back then was that a team couldn’t move up more than four spots leaving Ottawa as the winner. The Montreal Canadiens have never won a lottery and to go even further, hadn’t drafted overall since 1980 when they selected Doug Wickenheiser.
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The closest the Habs got to winning the lottery was in 2012 and 2016 when finishing 28th and 22nd overall. They stayed where they were drafting Alex Galchenyuk and Mikhail Sergachev respectively. They did get lucky in 2005 with Carey Price after moving up to select him fifth overall.
Hopefully, history doesn’t repeat itself, and the Habs get touched with some lottery luck.