Montreal Canadiens: The Five Goals That Kept Habs Out of Draft Lottery
The Montreal Canadiens are not officially involved in tonight’s draft lottery. If not for any of these five goals, the Habs would be taking part.
The Montreal Canadiens season did not go as planned. After just missing the playoffs by a couple of points in 2019, the Habs were hopeful that they could make up the difference this season and get into the 2020 postseason by being one of the top eight teams in the Eastern Conference standings.
Well, they certainly weren’t one of the top eight teams in the conference, but they still may find themselves in the playoffs. The Habs will be taking part in the NHL’s play-in series in late July. They will face the Pittsburgh Penguins in a Best-of-5 series to determine who qualifies for the familiar 16-team playoff format we are accustomed to seeing in the league.
The Habs barely snuck into that position, by being the 24th best team in the 24 team play-in series. The NHL has decided to bring back 24 teams, with eight of them getting automatic byes into the postseason, and the other 16 teams playing a series to see who gets to join the elite eight.
Even in this greatly expanded “playoff” the Canadiens just sneak in. There are 12 teams in the Eastern Conference that are still alive and have a chance to win the Stanley Cup this summer. With 71 points in 71 games this season, the Habs were just ahead of the Buffalo Sabres and New Jersey Devils in the east, who both had 68 points in 69 regular season games. The league used points percentage to determine the standings, and if the Habs had two less points, they would have finished behind both the Sabres and Devils.
This would have guaranteed the Habs miss the 2020 postseason. However, on the bright side it would given them in the sixth best chance of winning the first overall selection in tonight’s draft lottery.
This year’s lottery is an odd one to say the least. Technically the Habs do still have a remote chance of landing the first overall pick in this year’s draft. We would have to see one of the “placeholders” referred to as Team A through Team H win tonight’s lottery. Then, the Habs would have to lose to the Penguins. Then, the Habs would have to win a second lottery that involved the eight teams that lost in the play-in series, with that winner filling the placeholder position.
So, lottery 1 would have to be won by Team X which would then put a ghost runner on first and then the Habs would have to win lottery 2. We will have to wait and see what happens tonight. This would be a lot less confusing if the Habs just had two less points in the standings.
They came very close to having a couple less points on many nights where they snuck out with a victory. In fact, if not for any one of these five goals, the Habs would be sitting where the New Jersey Devils are tonight, and would have a 7.5% chance of knowing they will be able to draft Alexis Lafreniere, whenever the 2020 NHL Draft takes place.