The NHL Draft Lottery came and went on Saturday night, and despite some initial suspense after the seven teams below Philadelphia in the draft order all stayed in their current positions, the 93.5 percent chance the Flyers had of not picking first overall in June’s draft came to fruition as Bill Daly showed the Flyers’ card at the No. 7 spot.
Instead, it was the Edmonton Oilers — for the fourth time in the past six years — who came away from Saturday night as the big winners, and they are the ones who will be picking Connor McDavid on June 26 in Florida. They’ve put together a really nice core of, uh, top overall picks in that franchise and basically haven’t been able to put together anything else of note, so surely, the entire NHL will be sitting and waiting to see if/how they can screw this up.
Also, let’s take a second to laugh at the Buffalo Sabres and Arizona Coyotes, who tanked their seasons almost solely for McDavid and will not get him.
But in the meantime, the Flyers stayed at the pick they were expected to and didn’t get jumped, and McDavid will likely spend his greatest years in the other conference. So short of the Flyers themselves winning the lottery, this is one of the best possible outcomes for them.
And now we shift our focus to seeing who, other than Connor McDavid, the Flyers will look to draft in June. They have another pick from Tampa Bay that could fall anywhere between the 22nd and 30th picks, depending on when Tampa finishes its season, but there will assuredly be a lot of high-end talent on the board when the Flyers are on the board for the first time.
We’ll take a closer look at several potential Flyers draft picks over the next two months leading up to the draft itself. Until then, here are some rankings to mull over.
Full 2015 NHL Draft Order (1 – 14):
14. Boston Bruins
13. Los Angeles Kings
12. Dallas Stars
11. Florida Panthers
10. Colorado Avalanche
9. San Jose Sharks
8. Columbus Blue Jackets
7. Philadelphia Flyers
6. New Jersey Devils
5. Carolina Hurricanes
4. Toronto Maple Leafs
3. Arizona Coyotes
2. Buffalo Sabres
1. Edmonton Oilers
