Lockout Sweepstakes

 

 

Well the NHL lockout is almost three months in and even though it’s going to mediation, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be resolved anytime soon.  A few weeks ago, I joked about a few of the reasons that the lockout is good for the Wild.  Today I’m actually going to illustrate why one of those is starting to look pretty appealing.

The 2013 draft is shaping up to be one of the best in the last decade.  Not only is it a relatively deep class, but it has incredible top end talent.  Nathan MacKinnon has drawn comparisons to Sidney Crosby in his draft year.  He has incredible speed, dazzling hands, and a rocket of a shot.  He will make an immediate impact on the club that drafts him.  Seth Jones is a once-in-a-decade defenseman that is sure to be the next franchise blue liner.  He has a rare combination of size, skill, and intelligence that has scouts drooling over him.  Throw in Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Drouin, and Sean Monahan and you have five players that might as well keep their draft day jerseys on because they’ll be in the big league from the get-go. 

So how exactly do they determine draft order after a lockout?  Well, after the 04-05 lockout the draft order was decided by a lottery.  Teams could have a maximum of three balls in the lottery and a minimum of one.  Teams lost a ball for every time they had been to the playoffs the previous three seasons or had a first overall pick the previous three seasons.  If that’s the case this year, the breakdown will go like this.

3 Balls (7 teams)
Dallas
Calgary
Winnipeg
Toronto
Minnesota
Columbus
Carolina

2 Balls (6 teams)
New York Islanders
Florida
Tampa Bay
St. Louis
Colorado
Anaheim

1 Ball (17 teams)
Edmonton
Washington
Philadelphia
New York Rangers
Boston
New Jersey
Buffalo
Ottawa
Vancouver
Phoenix
Nashville
Detroit
Chicago
San Jose
Los Angeles
Montreal
Pittsburgh

This would mean there are fifty balls total in the lottery.  That gives the 3-ball teams a 6% chance at the top pick, the 2-ball teams a 4% chance, and the one ball teams a 2% chance.  Like I said before, this class has five (or more) fantastic picks so we wanted to see what the Wild’s odds were of getting a top five pick.  I had our volunteer statisticians (WMS teachers Jeff Winslow and Aaron Finders) figure out the range of odds.  There isn’t an exact percentage because if teams with one or two balls get drawn first the odds don’t increase as much as if a team with three balls is drawn.  Therefore, they computed a range of odds given various scenarios.  The probable range of a top five pick for the Wild is 6-8% with a best case scenario of 10%. 

One last thing to ponder is if the league decides to change the lottery system to prohibit top teams from having any chance of a top pick.  Bloggers, beat writers, and fans have all discussed the chance of the league drawing for the top seven picks, middle six picks, and bottom seventeen picks separately.  If this was the case, this would be a jackpot for those seven teams.

In closing, it is still too early to say that there won’t be an NHL season.  However, you can see just how lucky the Wild could get if this were to happen.  If the Wild were to add McKinnon or Jones (or even Drouin, Bartok, or Monahan) to their current crop of prospects and summer free agent signings, the State of Hockey could see a Stanley Cup contender as early as next season!