Saturday night was a tough one for Canucks fans. It’s likely to be one that we’ll all remember for quite some time, and it’s unlikely that things will ever be the same from this point forward. The loss that Vancouver endured that night will forever change the landscape of Canucks hockey.

But enough about Josh Weissbock and Money Puck. (am I allowed to use his real name yet?)

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The Canucks hockey club also experienced a loss and it was f*#king terrible. And to the goddamn Bruins… Come on.

So on a totally unrelated matter, let’s talk about the lottery odds for the 2016 NHL Entry Draft.

Under regular circumstances, this topic would seem odd for early December. The draft is still six and a half months away, and the lottery odds themselves were revealed well over a year ago.

But I just figured, ya know, given what’s been going on lately that some people might be interested in how the new lottery system works – as of 2016 there will be three lotteries rather than just one, making it considerably harder to hold on the top spot if you just so happen to finish dead last in the league.

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With just four wins in their last 17 attempts, the Canucks are starting to make 30th place look like a legitimate possibility.

Sure, they just ran over the Sabres (who just happened to finish 30th in each of the last two season), and they finally got some scoring from a line than didn’t have the Sedins on it (ending a 355 minute drought of secondary scoring), and because the Pacific Division is such a tire fire right now they are actually tied for second in the division.

But the Canucks need to start stringing a number of wins together lest they continue to sink into the league’s basement (assuming the Oilers haven’t locked themselves in yet), and it just so happens that they’ll be taking on the New York Rangers tonight before heading out on a six game road trip. Hmm.

If things do fall apart again, don’t fret too much. After all, there are advantages to being the worst! So consider this a glass-half-full foray into the benefits of being terrible.

Lottery Odds

In order to combat tanking, which the NHL claims to believe isn’t a thing, the NHL made some changes to its draft lottery odds for the 2015 Entry Draft.



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Simple enough. The changes meant that the worst team in the league now had a 1-in-5 shot at getting the first overall pick. In order words, the last place team has a far greater chance of not getting the best draft pick than they do of getting it.

This was only the beginning though, the first change of two-part process as the NHL phased in new lottery rules over two drafts. In 2016, things get a little wild as instead of one lottery, there will be three.

Now the first, second, and third overall selections will be assigned via a lottery. The bigger implication here is that the team with the worst record could technically end up picking as low as fourth overall. Yikes.

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The extra lotteries add another wrinkle to the lottery odds – whenever a team wins, they are removed from the lottery, meaning that the odds have to be statistically readjusted. The NHL (sort of) describes the process here:

The allocation of odds for the 1st Lottery draw will be the same as outlined above for the 2015 NHL Draft Lottery. The odds for the remaining teams will increase on a proportionate basis for the 2nd Lottery draw, based on which Club wins the 1st Lottery draw, and again for the 3rd Lottery draw, based on which Club wins the 2nd Lottery draw.

The 11 Clubs not selected in the Draft Lottery will be assigned NHL Draft selections 4 through 14, in inverse order of regular-season points.

I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of hockey fans want nothing to do with statistical readjustments, so I’ve plug the numbers into spreadsheets and gone over some of the various possibilities. Keep in mind that because the odds change depending on two original winners being selected from 14 teams, there are literally hundreds of possible combinations of odds.

Here are some of the more basic examples.

The Worst Teams Win: 1st then 2nd





This is technically the most likely scenario, but of course with this many combinations the most likely scenario isn’t very likely. The chances of the worst two teams picking first and second overall respectively is just 3.3%.

Everything is proportional, so the chances for the 14th worst team don’t change much, even when the biggest chunks are removed. Third worst has the most to gain here and has a little better than a 1-in-6 chance at winning the third overall selection.

The Worst Team GetsPassed Over: 2nd then 3rd





A frightening possibility for any bottom-feeding team, falling down a couple of rungs is certainly possible. By the team that third lottery comes around, though, the worst team’s odds have increased to better than 1-in-4.

Of course, if that were the case, they’d also have almost a 75% chance of dropping all the way to fourth. That’d be rough. Tim Murray would feel so bad for his fans.

The “Best” Teams Win: 14th then 13th





I’m using the term “best” gingerly here since these teams still missed the playoffs. No surprise that when the small odds are removed, the rest don’t change by very much.

This is the most unlikely scenario off and has just a 0.02% chance of occurring, or 1-in-5000. The chances of 12th worst winning the third lottery on top of 14th and 13th winning? Just 0.0005% or 1-in-200,000. Probably not gonna happen. It would be hilarious if it did though.

It’s way too early in the season to know where the Canucks are going to finish. Hell, the Pacific division is so brutal, the Canucks are still somehow in a playoff spot, despite being just four points from the bottom of the conference. Figure that one out. A short little run of wins and all this talk could be totally behind us, at least for a little while.

Whatever the future has in store for this Vancouver team, it seems that more and more people are willing to admit that last place has become a legitimate option for this team. There you go, Tank Nation. You might be right after all.

If the Canucks do end up in a decent lottery position, I can rejig the spreadsheet to show how the odds of their particular position would be affected by various winners. Until then, we have little to do but keep watching the games and hoping that they look more like the Buffalo game and less like the Boston one.

And if things really bottom out, well have you seen this Auston Matthews kid?





