The NHL Draft Lottery Wasn't Rigged
But fans have doubts, and I wouldn't have it any other way
I don’t think the 2023 NHL Draft Lottery was rigged.1 But after watching the broadcast of the lottery’s results on Monday night, I can understand why fans had their doubts.
I tuned into the ESPN broadcast a few minutes late on Monday night, and got there just in time for Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly to announce the results.
It didn’t take long to get the feeling that something was a little off.
Moments after Daly informed us that the Calgary Flames would be picking 16th, ESPN’s Kevin Weekes chimed in helpfully with the fact that this would be the fourth time Calgary had drafted in the 16th slot in franchise history. Weekes was pretty quick off the draw with that piece of trivia, so quick in fact that it was clear that ESPN had been let in on the results of the draft lottery before air time.2
Later on, the broadcast accidentally revealed prematurely that the Columbus Blue Jackets, the team with the second worst record in the league, had dropped from #2 to #3 in the draft order (whoops!), meaning either the Chicago Blackhawks or Anaheim Ducks would get the top pick and the right to select the next can’t miss hockey prospect, Connor Bedard. Moments later, Chicago had snagged the top pick, with Anaheim, the league’s worst team, dropping to #2.3
Which is where things really went off the rails. A lot of hockey fans aren’t terribly happy with the Blackhawks, not with the way they covered up the sexual assault of one of their players just before the 2010 Stanley Cup Finals. Allegations that former coach Brad Aldrich had molested Blackhawks player Kyle Beach didn’t surface till more than a decade later, and though the members of the coaching staff and front office who were involved in that decision suffered mightily and the team was fined $2 million, many fans are understandably still angry. They can’t stand the thought that the franchise deserves the potential windfall that drafting Bedard represents and who can blame them?4
This isn’t the first time fans concluded a draft lottery was fixed. The history of doubts goes all the way back to the first draft lottery conducted by the NBA in 1985. To this day, a certain segment of fans believe that NBA Commissioner David Stern did something to ensure a moribund New York Knicks franchise got the first pick and the right to select Georgetown University’s Patrick Ewing.
And these doubts persist in the face of overwhelming evidence that the lottery was fair and square. After all, Stern picked envelopes out of a bowl in front of a live audience with millions more watching from home via CBS Sports.5 If a lottery with that sort of transparency gets questions, I’m at a loss to posit how one structured like the NHL’s, which is so much more complicated and conducted largely behind the scenes, can win the confidence of the hardcore NHL fan who would tune it to watch.
I’m ok with that. We live in a time when institutions are inherently mistrusted, and there’s no reason the NHL should be any different.6 Monday night’s broadcast had a pretty significant glitch when it was revealed the Blue Jackets would drop in the draft order, and if fans who pay the freight want to ask questions, then they ought to be able to ask any questions they want.
When the Soviet Union had the habit of cheating on arms control treaties, Ronald Reagan turned the tables on them by popularizing a Russian proverb in English that advised, "trust, but verify." And today, if you know anything about Bitcoin, you understand how "proof of work" never hurt anybody. The NHL should take heed.
Eric McErlain blogged at Off Wing Opinion regularly from 2002-2009. His work has also appeared at The Sporting News, AOL FanHouse, NBC Sports.com, Deadspin, The Hockey Writers, Pro Football Weekly and The Washington Post. In 1993, he wrote one of the first columns in a daily newspaper covering fantasy football for The Washington Times.
While I was doing my preliminary research for this post, when I consulted a search engine on the topic, one of the most popular auto-complete results was “NHL draft fake.”
I understand that ESPN pays a lot of money to air NHL games, but the fans pay a lot of money too and their taxes subsidize the arenas the teams play in. They deserve to be in on the entire process.
Draft lotteries were started ostensibly to discourage teams from “tanking” games in order to secure a high draft pick. I’m not sure it’s working. This season, the team’s five worst teams went a collective 10-34-6 over their last 10 regular season games, with league worst Anaheim losing 13 straight to close out their schedule.
According to reports, the team sold $2.5 million in season tickets in the 90 minutes following the announcement that it had won the draft lottery.
I watched the NBA lottery that year during breaks between butter churning and cow milking.
Here in Washington, the “Burning The Floor” incident and the criminal format of the draft lottery that sent Sidney Crosby to Pittsburgh are all we need to doubt the league’s probity when it comes to dealing with the Capitals. And given that the team has been in downtown DC since the 1997-98 NHL season, why in the world hasn’t it hosted either an NHL Draft or NHL All-Star Game? Inquiring minds want to know.