NHL studies ways to have draft go ahead in June
The NHL’S making one last big push to hold an early draft in June.
Hockey Night in Canada’s Elliotte Friedman reported Friday night deputy commissioner Bill Daly sent out an email earlier in the day outlining why the NHL would like to hold the 2020 draft before the season is completed and the format being proposed would be good for the Ottawa Senators.
The eight-page email, which arrived in the inbox of the 31 owners and general managers around 5 p.m. Friday, explains this will be a big part of the discussion during Monday’s bi-weekly meeting with the board of governors held by commissioner Gary Bettman with the league on pause because of the threat of the novel coronavirus around the world.
“I’d say judging by the memo it’s 100 per cent going to happen,” said a league executive Saturday. “The NHL wants it and so do their television partners so they’ll find a way to make it work.”
After watching the success the NFL had by holding a virtual draft last month, the NHL would like to follow in football’s footsteps. The NHL’S broadcast partners — NBC in the United States and Rogers in Canada — have both given it an endorsement and the reality is they’d have a captive audience.
“Staging the NHL draft in
June would provide us with the opportunity of building a profile and platform for this event that it has never enjoyed before — particularly in the United States,” Daly wrote in the email that was obtained by Postmedia after Friedman’s report. “The sports media generally is in desperate need of new, original and compelling sports content, which will incentivize it to promote and cover our draft in ways that it has never been covered before.”
As Daly told Postmedia last month, the NHL would use points-percentage to determine the odds for the draft lottery.
Under that system, the Detroit Red Wings would hold the best odds of winning the lottery at 18.5 per cent while the Senators would have the second-best odds at 13.5 per cent with their selection and another 11.5 per cent chance with the first-round pick they acquired from the San Jose Sharks in the Erik Karlsson deal.
The twist in the memo is the league wants to go back to an old system it used by having only one team winning the lottery and no team can move up more than four spots. Daly said there have been concerns among the general managers that under the current format a team could technically win the lottery and then go on to win the Stanley Cup if the season is completed in the summer.
Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston noted under this format Detroit would be guaranteed to get the No. 1 or No. 2 selection because teams can only fall back one spot while the Senators would drop no further than No. 3 and No. 4. Ottawa owner Eugene Melnyk and GM Pierre Dorion haven’t had any objections to a June draft and it would be surprising if they didn’t like this format.
“We believe the concern can be effectively addressed simply by changing the format of draft lottery for this season only,” said Daly. “If we reverted to our old practice of picking just one draft lottery winner (while maintaining the same allocation of draft lottery odds), and we limited any move-up by a lottery-winning team to a maximum of four draft positions, we would be able to eliminate the possibility of any ‘bubble team’ winning a top draft selection and winning the Stanley Cup.”
The Senators also hold the New York Islanders’ first-round pick but it’s lottery protected if it’s in the top three — under this scenario Ottawa would be guaranteed of having that selection.
“We have reviewed the terms of these trades — numbering roughly 15 in total — and we believe that, in most cases, the undetermined conditions can be resolved with relatively simple ‘fixes,’ which the league would be prepared to rule on,” Daly said. “We would propose that we share our review and proposed ‘solutions’ to each of the participating clubs in each of the implicated trades and then provide the teams with a period of up to seven days to either: (a) reform the trade on terms acceptable to both teams, or (b) accept the ‘solution’ that has been proposed to them by the league.”
A large portion of the memo is spent on analyzing the difficultly of trying to complete trades but indicates the bottom line is those deals could be done in the off-season.
Daly noted in the memo if the teams don’t agree to hold the draft next month it’s just going to create more headaches down the road if the season isn’t completed until September and then the league has a shortened off-season to drop the puck again in mid-november or December.
“In the event we do not move up the date of the draft, and assuming a best-case scenario in which we are able to resume and finish the 2019-20 season in some fashion, the likely timeline involved for awarding the Stanley Cup would be early to mid-september at the earliest,” Daly wrote.
“That would leave us with a relatively short window in which to conduct a draft lottery and to stage a draft before moving to the period of time that will be needed to accommodate free agency and all of the necessary contract negotiations and signings that have to take place prior to the start of next season.”