If there's one thing that hockey fans can, by in large, agree on, is that the NHL Draft Lottery is far from a perfect system.
On Friday night, the league unveiled the draft lottery order. The hockey world came to standstill when it was announced that the Los Angeles Kings would be selecting second overall, allowing the placeholder team who'll compete in the 24-team play-in tournament to nab the first overall pick in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft.
The lowly Detroit Red Wings, who won just 17 games, accumulating 39 points in just 71 games, fell down to the fourth spot, while the Ottawa Senators, who had the San Jose Sharks' first-round pick from the Erik Karlsson trade, will pick 3rd and 5th.
Almost every year, it seems that the top of the draft shakes out much differently than projected.
Thanks to Reddit User 'GucciPotato69' we have a nice stats sheet looking at the teams with the best and worst luck in the draft lottery.
Looks who's at the top: Placeholder E, followed by the Philadelphia Flyers, who moved up 11 spots in 2017 to select Nolan Patrick. The New Jersey Devils are also near the top, as they've picked first overall twice in 2017 (Nico Hischier) and 2019 (Jack Hughes). Carolina is high because of the pick they used to select Andrei Svechnikov in 2018.
On the contrary, you have to feel sorry for the Detroit Red Wings. Although the Canucks have two franchise building blocks in Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes, they've had the worst luck out of any team not named Detroit at the lottery. But come draft time, they've done very well.
There's no question that building through the draft is the way to do it, but as some team's have shown, it's more so who you pick, and not necessarily not where you pick.
