Connor McDavid is largely considered to be the next Sidney Crosby, and on Saturday night, he’ll learn which NHL team will select him in this June’s NHL Draft.
The Flyers have a 6.5% chance of winning the lottery and thus the first overall pick in this year’s draft. So it’s not likely that they ping pong balls will bounce their way and they’ll get the right to select McDavid, but …. hey, we can dream right?
The Flyers will pick either No. 1 overall, No. 7 overall or No. 8 overall in the draft, depending on what happens tonight. Here are all the potential outcomes. The Buffalo Sabres have the best chance of landing the top pick, and they are guaranteed with the first or second pick, but even their chances of getting McDavid are only 20 percent.
Today’s the day Part 2: NHL draft lottery probabilities for all 14 teams pic.twitter.com/XM9QQ9r9Ed
— James Mirtle (@mirtle) April 18, 2015
The second pick is expected to land a team Boston University standout freshman Jack Eichel, another guy considered to be a generational talent. The Flyers cannot draft second, so get Eichel out of your plans.
Here’s how the whole thing works, as explained by the NHL:
To determine the winner, the official lottery machine is loaded with 14 balls, each bearing one number, 1 to 14. The NHL Draft Lottery involves drawing one set of four numbers from the machine. One ball is expelled from the machine at a ten-second interval until four balls are discharged.
Without regard to the order the numbers are drawn, there are exactly 1,001 four-number combinations. Each of the 14 teams in the NHL Draft Lottery is assigned the number of combinations corresponding to the odds allocated to them by their regular-season finish (i.e., the team given a 20% chance to win the NHL Draft Lottery is represented by 200 of the 1,001 possible combinations, the team with a 13.5% chance is assigned 135 combinations, and so forth). One combination (11, 12, 13, 14) has been designated as a “re-draw,” allowing for the division of exactly 1,000 combinations proportionately.
All number combinations are assigned to teams at random by Bortz & Company.
The lottery will be held around 8 p.m. on Saturday night as part of the pregame show to Game 2 of the New York Rangers vs. Pittsburgh Penguins playoff series. You can watch along on NBC.
