Islanders win NHL draft lottery

NEW YORK -- The New York Islanders won the National Hockey League Draft Drawing today and retained the first overall drafting position for the 2009 NHL Entry Draft, June 26 and 27 at Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec.
 
The Islanders had the greatest percentage likelihood, 25%, that one of the numbered sequences assigned to them would be the winning combination. Under the lottery system, only the five teams with the fewest points had the chance to win the first overall selection; no team could move up more than four spots and no team could move backward more than one.
 
The Tampa Bay Lightning, Colorado Avalanche, Atlanta Thrashers and Los Angeles Kings own the second, third, fourth and fifth drafting positions in the first round.
 
The Islanders, who also won the NHL Draft Drawing in 2000, have selected first overall three times in franchise history.  With those picks, the team selected Bill Harris (1972), Denis Potvin (1973) and Rick DiPietro (2000).
 
The order of selection for the first 14 drafting positions in the first round, only, of the 2009 Entry Draft is as follows:
 
      1.  New York Islanders
      2.  Tampa Bay Lightning
      3.  Colorado Avalanche
      4.  Atlanta Thrashers
      5.  Los Angeles Kings
      6.  Phoenix Coyotes
      7.  Toronto Maple Leafs
      8.  Dallas Stars
      9.  Ottawa Senators
    10.  Edmonton Oilers
    11.  Nashville Predators
    12.  Minnesota Wild
    13.  Buffalo Sabres
    14.  Florida Panthers
 
The remaining drafting positions will be determined at the conclusion of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
 
The Drawing was conducted at the NHL’s New York office and the results were televised live on the Scotiabank / NHL Draft Lottery on TSN in Canada and VERSUS in the U.S.  The results also were streamed live on NHL.com. Fourteen balls, numbered 1 to 14, were placed in a lottery machine. The machine expelled four balls, forming a series of numbers. The four-digit series resulting from the expulsion of the balls was matched against a probability chart that divided the possible combinations among the 14 participating clubs. The chart showed that the Islanders had been assigned the numbers (5-7-6-11) that were expelled.
 
The Draft Drawing is a weighted system to give the teams that finished with the fewest points during the regular season the greatest chance of having their combination selected. The Islanders finished the regular season with the fewest points in the League (61) and were assigned the greatest number of combinations, representing a 25% likelihood that their combination would emerge. Tampa Bay (66 points) was assigned 18.8% of the combinations, followed by the Avalanche (14.2%) and the Thrashers (10.7%).  The Kings and Coyotes each finished the season with 79 points, but as a result of having fewer wins, the Kings were assigned 8.1% of the number combinations and the Coyotes 6.2%.  The remaining teams had the following chances: 4.7%, 3.6%, 2.7%, 2.1%, 1.5%, 1.1%, 0.8% and 0.5%.
 
The 2009 NHL Entry Draft will take place at Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec. The first round is on Friday, June 26 the subsequent rounds will take place on Saturday, June 27.