The NHL will hold its annual draft lottery tonight, with the drawing to be broadcast live from the NHL Network studios. Teams who missed the playoffs will be watching closely to see if their franchise can hit the jackpot.
Believe it or not, the Blue Jackets actually have a chance to win at the lottery this year, albeit a very slim chance. After finishing the season tied for 15th in the NHL standings, they hold the 14th spot in the draft order at this moment.
If that doesn't make sense, allow me to explain the intricacies here: the Jackets are ahead of 18 teams in the order, because two of the three teams they tied with in the standings made the playoffs. That automatically excludes them from the lottery, and places the Jackets ahead of them in the order.
The other team they tied with (Detroit) held the seeding tie-breaker, so they hold the 15th selection. Add in another team (Los Angeles) that finished two points back-but made the playoffs in the west-and it somewhat, kinda, maybe makes sense.
What are their odds?
Finishing 14th in the standings means that the Blue Jackets have a 1.5% chance of winning the lottery tonight and moving up in the order. But, it's worth noting that under the league's current lottery format, they can only move up a maximum of 10 spots.
So, winning the lottery would be the difference between picking 14th overall, and picking 4th overall. It wouldn't be the best outcome ever, but they would definitely get a better prospect if they could move up and pick that high in the draft order.
Last year, the New York Islanders won the lottery and moved up from 10 to 1, selecting franchise-altering defenseman Matthew Schaefer first overall. Their odds to win were just 3.5%.
More notably, the Utah Mammoth hit the second draw with the exact same odds as the Blue Jackets (1.5%), moving up to 4th overall and selecting big winger Caleb Desnoyers. Lets hope for a repeat of that tonight.
Of course, if you have been here for long enough, you know what the outcome will be. Despite being the worst franchise in the NHL over the span of their 25 year existence, the Blue Jackets have not had much lottery luck.
They've "won" just one time, back in 2016 when the league did three lottery draws for the top-3 selections. The Blue Jackets won the third one, eventually selecting Pierre-Luc Dubois with that pick at the 2016 Draft.
What happens if they don't win?
The odds are against a Blue Jackets lottery win tonight. That's the downside to finishing in the mushy middle. They didn't make the playoffs, and they won't likely have a draft pick high enough to make any meaningful difference in the near future.
For that reason, I think that if the outcome goes as we all assume it will, this pick is going to be shopped hard for immediate help this summer. Even though it's not a high pick, it could be good enough to be packaged with something else for an upgrade to the current roster.
We'll see. For now, we'll see where the lottery balls land. You can catch the drawing tonight at 7:00 Eastern time, via NHL Network.
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