League studying idea of virtual draft in June
The National Hockey League is studying the possibility of holding its draft in June virtually.
Deputy commissioner Bill Daly confirmed Wednesday he told the NHL general managers in a conference call Tuesday the league is studying the possibility of holding the draft in June instead of waiting until after the regular season and the playoffs are completed. There would be complications involved in that process, but it’s something the NHL head office wants to look at if it’s able to overcome the hurdles involved.
“The logistics would be different, there’s no doubt about that,” Daly told Postmedia from his New York office. “We wouldn’t have proposed this unless there were ways we felt we could deal with the logistics in effective ways. Nothing’s going to be perfect, and the point we’re making to the general managers is, with the end of the season and trying to fit in a draft lottery and a draft, and trying to determine what a draft lottery looks like in a short off-season, may be challenges as well.
“There’s not going to be any perfect scenario here. You look to find a scenario that you can make work, that’s fair and has integrity, and you go from there. I’m not suggesting one way or another whether there are legs to the possibility, but it’s being thrown around and being talked about.”
Not only does the league have to decide what to do about conditional picks, such as the first-round selection the Ottawa Senators received from the New York Islanders in the Jean-Gabriel Pageau deal at the deadline, there’s also things like the potential for draft-day trades that have to be dealt with. In the past, teams have moved picks for players who will be on their roster the next year.
Holding the draft in June would give the league some much-needed exposure and would get people talking because, at that point, the sport may be ramping back up to return to empty venues. In this situation, the reality is teams have to be open-minded because nobody has been here before.
“I would say on the call there were some questions, there may have been one general manager who had opposition without being able to consider all the pros and cons, so I think it’s too early to say how the managers feel about it generally,” Daly said.
Naturally, the league would have to set the rules for how the lottery would be held, but Daly noted a simple solution would be to just determine the odds by the winning percentage of the teams out of the post-season when the league went on pause. Right now, the Detroit Red Wings would have the best chance to get the No. 1 at 18.5 per cent due to their .275 winning percentage while the Senators would be second at .437, giving them a 13.5 per cent chance.
Ottawa also has the San Jose Sharks’ No. 1 pick and they would have the third-best chance of getting the top selection at 11.5 per cent, which would give the Senators an overall 25 per cent chance of winning the lottery. The Los Angeles Kings are fourth at .457, which would give them a 9.5 per cent chance.
Daly said the league won’t do anything without a consensus from the teams.
“The most likely metric would be the teams’ points percentage at the time of the pause in terms of determining draft order. There are other ways to do it and there are even alternative ways to do it using points percentage,” Daly said. “But, at the end of the day, it would be objective, fair and a fair measure of what a draft is supposed to do, which is advantage the teams who need the most help from a talent standpoint.