Wings have best odds for No. 1 pick in Draft Lottery

There had been many rumors about the NHL's plan to return to play and what the playoff format and draft lottery would be.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman explained the official plans that the league and NHL Players' Association agreed on in a live Tuesday afternoon video announcement.

There will be a 24-team playoff, which means the Detroit Red Wings, Ottawa Senators, San Jose Sharks, Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks, New Jersey Devils and Buffalo Sabres are the seven teams that will not be resuming play.

Ottawa has the rights to San Jose's first-round pick.

Naturally, the aspect that most interested the Red Wings and their fans was the Draft Lottery.

Originally scheduled for April 9, the lottery will now take place on June 26, before the expected start of the qualifying round of the playoffs.

There will be three separate draws, one for each of the top three picks. If the seven teams who are not returning to play are drawn for each of those spots then that will conclude the lottery.

The remaining four teams that did not get one of the top three picks will be assigned picks 4-7 in inverse order based on their points percentage at the time of the league's regular-season pause on March 12.

The remaining picks, 8-15, will be assigned to teams that do not advance from the qualifying round and will also go in inverse order based on their points percentage at the time of the pause.

If the winning team for the first draw comes from the 8-15 group, then that will take place during a Phase 2 of the Draft Lottery, which will happen between the qualifying round and first round.

"Obviously there was a lot of debate with respect to the possibility of moving the draft up and staging the draft before the resumption of play," NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said on a video conference call. "We certainly felt like we had an acceptable window to be able to accomplish that, if that was something we wanted to do, and certainly there were reasons why we thought that might be a good idea. But as with most issues, we brought it to the clubs and there was not a strong consensus one way or the other, quite frankly, on whether we should do it. Certainly the people that were opposed to it felt strongly about being opposed to it.

"Some of the factors, probably the most significant one we gave the most weight to, was the lack of the ability to use the draft as an opportunity, as a jumping-off place for forming next year's roster, resetting in the offseason like many of our clubs do. The inability to kind of have a trade associated with active players in and around the draft, those were voiced, I thought, very articulately and certainly had a strong factor in what we ultimately decided to do."

Daly said one of the reasons they changed the lottery format was to help teams like Detroit that are not resuming play.

"They have the ability to engage with their fanbase during that long time between games," Daly said. "We thought the draft lottery was a way to create excitement, create a way for those teams to engage with their fanbase, get some certainty early on and not go into a long slumber, creating buzz over the summertime."

The odds to get the first overall pick remain as they were when the season was paused.

1. Detroit Red Wings .275 18.5%

2. Ottawa Senators .437 13.5%

3. Ottawa Senators* .437 11.5%

4. Los Angeles Kings .457 9.5%

5. Anaheim Ducks .472 8.5%

6. New Jersey Devils .493\\ 7.5%

7. Buffalo Sabres .493\\ 6.5%

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8. Team A n/a 6.0%

9. Team B n/a 5.0%

10. Team C n/a 3.5%

11. Team D n/a 3.0%

12. Team E n/a 2.5%

13. Team F n/a 2.0%

14. Team G n/a 1.5%

15. Team H n/a 1.0%

\ Acquired in a trade with San Jose Sharks (.450 points percentage)*

\* Buffalo Sabres ranked higher than New Jersey Devils on the basis of higher regulation/OT win percentage (Buffalo, .406 ROW%; New Jersey, .348 ROW%)*

The Wings' best odds are for the No. 4 pick, at 50.6 percent.

As for the playoffs themselves, Bettman said when medical and local officials deem it to be safe, the games will take place in two hub cities, one for the Eastern Conference and one for the Western Conference.

Cities under consideration are Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Edmonton, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Toronto and Vancouver.

These games will all be played without fans in attendance and the teams will have limited personnel allowed on site.

Those teams that are not part of the 24-team playoff picture are likely to have an exceptionally long layoff between games, with the thought that the start of the 2020-21 season could be delayed by as many as two to three months.

"In terms of getting ready for next season, we're dealing with a lot of issues right now," Daly noted. "Obviously we're going to be sensitive to issues like the ones you raised. Competitively, our hockey operations department is focused on that. We'll focus with the players' association on that. There may very well be different offseason rules because we've never been in this type of situation before and unique situations sometimes necessitate unique measures. We'll see how to approach that, we'll be sensitive to those issues and we'll make the best decisions we can at the time."

Looking ahead to next season, Bettman said they're planning on a full 82-game slate, whenever it begins, and they're optimistic that it will be more normal when that happens, especially considering the loss of gate receipts with the unplayed 2019-20 regular season games and the playoff games with no fans.

"The issue of gate receipts is one from an economic standpoint that affects all sports," Bettman said on the conference call. "None of the major leagues are able to ignore the fact that they're not getting gate receipts. It's a significant revenue item for everyone. Not as significant to us as I read in the paper, that it's the majority of our revenues. But having said that, we're planning on having a '20-'21 season that's full in all ways and our hope is that we'll be able to have fans there. If it turns out that due to things beyond our control, like COVID-19 and government regulations, then we'll have to deal with it at the time.

"But much like we're completing this season, we believe it's going to be important to play next season and again, our hope and expectation is we're going to be doing it when we start, which will be later, with people in the building."