Montreal Canadiens: Does New Draft Lottery System Imply a 24 Team Playoff?

The Montreal Canadiens were on their way to missing the playoffs for the third consecutive season. Does the proposed new draft lottery imply the Habs could be in playoff plans?

The Montreal Canadiens, along with every team in the National Hockey League, are forced to sit on the sidelines and wait on this global pandemic. While the players are quarantined with their families, there is little they can do to prepare for whatever the hockey schedule is going to look like when it returns.

Although the players are not able to perform their regular duties, behind closed doors, the league’s lawyers and commissioner and his staff have been hard at work this whole time. They are trying to come up with a plan to complete the 2019-20 season that will be safe for the players but will also maximize revenue.

One possibility that has been thrown around lately that would not help them complete the season, but would help them make some money, is to hold the NHL Draft in June. This would be unique, since the draft is always held after the season, but in June, we would not yet know how the season unfolds.

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This would at least give the league some revenue from television advertisements. With the entire world locked away in their homes during this pandemic, holding the draft in June before the end of the regular season could give them a record audience. It worked extraordinarily well for the National Football League at the end of April, and could provide a nice boost of revenue for the NHL in June.

Another reason for the league to run the draft in June, is most scouts contracts end, just like the players, on June 30th. Each amateur scout holds information about their team’s draft list and having scouts changing teams before the draft makes little sense. It sounds easy to just push those contracts until the season ends, like the players will have to do, but it may not work as smoothly for scouts.

Imagine a scout that has been working in Europe following the best teenaged players in Sweden and Finland for a specific NHL team for years. Imagine this scout is in the last year of their contract and it gets pushed until the end of the NHL season, which doesn’t end up being completed until September. Well, what if the Swedish Hockey League starts up in the middle of September? Does the scout start working for the his NHL team on the 2021 NHL Draft rankings and then sign with another team a few weeks later?

I’m sure it is not an impossible situation to sort out, but there are many wrinkles to iron out if the draft is held after the season – whenever that will be.

Another idea that has been tossed out there has been reverting back to the old draft lottery system. Teams that missed the playoffs used to be entered into a lottery that affected draft rankings. If you “won” the lottery, you were eligible to move up four slots in the draft. So, teams that finished in the bottom five in the league standings all had a chance to pick first overall. The team that finished last had the greatest chance of winning the lottery, but the team that finished just outside the playoffs had an opportunity to “win” and move up from 14th to 10th.

This is the system the league plans on going back to if they hold the draft in June. In their current system, there is a lottery held for each of the first three picks. Whether you start with the second overall pick or 14th doesn’t matter, if you win the lottery, you jump all the way up to the top three.

However, the league plans on going back to their old system. Why? Because they are worried that a team would win the lottery and move up from 14th to 1st overall and then make the playoffs and also win the Stanley Cup. I guess in this world of global pandemics, murder hornets and the pentagon telling us there are UFO’s flying around, the only thing that we couldn’t possible handle is the New York Islanders winning the Stanley Cup and selecting 1st overall in the draft.

Which got me thinking. Why not just reduce the lottery to the teams that aren’t going to make the playoffs? So what if the Buffalo Sabres jump from 7th to 2nd overall? What’s the worry about the Montreal Canadiens moving from 8th overall up to 1st? They don’t have a chance at the playoffs anyway…

Or do they? The Habs are currently ten points back of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference under normal circumstances. These are, of course, not normal circumstances. So why shouldn’t they be allowed to win the first overall pick? Heck, they can’t even get the third overall pick if the league uses the old format.

Is it because the league plans on including the Canadiens in the postseason this year? As the situation currently stands, the Habs are the worst team that would have no chance at moving into the top three in the draft lottery. You could argue that moving back to the old draft lottery format has the biggest negative effect on the Habs.

So, why keep them out of the draft lottery? Well, the Habs are currently 24th in the league standings. There was one idea thrown around earlier during this hiatus that suggested the league would increase the number of playoff teams to 24. This would greatly increase revenue, as not only would it include more cities and fan bases in the playoffs, it would lead to more playoff games and also bring the New York Rangers, Chicago Blackhawks and Montreal Canadiens into the playoff picture.

Those are some mighty big markets to include that would otherwise be shut out in a regular playoff format. So, instead of finishing the regular season, the league would basically find a way for the top eight teams to get a bye to the “first round” of the playoffs, while the next 16 teams would battle it out to join them.

This would leave the bottom seven teams in the league out of the playoffs altogether. What do their fans get to cheer for? Well, after a lousy season, like usual, they would be looking forward to the draft lottery. Each of those seven teams would have a chance of “winning” the lottery and at the very least, moving into the top three.

Is this a scenario the league is looking to use? I can’t say that for sure. However, we have heard the idea of a 24 team playoff floated out there. We have also heard the league is going back to the “old” draft lottery system. The two go hand in hand. A perfect scenario to finish the 2019-20 season is not going to be found. This scenario would at least give every team a playoff chance or a lottery chance, and it ties together two ideas that have been widely rumoured already.

Could it be that we actually see Montreal Canadiens playoff games this year? We will have to wait and see, but with all the information that is being tossed around, a 24 team playoff and the old draft lottery system make a lot of sense.