Gatineau wins QMJHL draft lottery

The Gatineau Olympiques have won the top two picks for next month’s Quebec Major Junior Hockey League draft.

The Saint John Sea Dogs moved up one spot in Wednesday’s lottery and will select third followed by Gatineau and the Quebec Remparts.

The lottery was held live via the league’s YouTube channel, but the league ran into some technical difficulties that forced it to abandon the production. League officials were scheduled to have a debriefing Wednesday night to determine what went wrong.

“It was embarrassing,” commissioner Gilles Courteau said before entering the briefing.

“We have to get it fixed because we’re having our midget draft on June 5 and 6 and we need all our tools and technical aspects to be up and running and make sure we’ll be able to do it first class.”

The Mooseheads have two selections in the first round. They own Charlottetown’s pick (14th overall) acquired in the Raphaël Lavoie deal with Chicoutimi and Chicoutimi’s own pick (18th overall) in the Patrick Kyte deal.

Charlottetown had traded its pick to Chicoutimi in August for 16-year-old defenceman Oscar Plandowski, a

Halifax native.

The Cape Breton Eagles own their own pick, which will be 17th overall.

There are two compensation picks in the first round as Evan Nause didn’t report to Val-d’Or and Guillaume Richard didn't report to Victoriaville.

Val-d’Or will draft sixth overall and Victoriaville seventh. That is where each player was drafted in 2019.

Gatineau had the best odds (85.5 per cent) of winning the lottery, owning the lottery balls for the worst three teams in the league last season. They had AcadieBathurst’s and Halifax’s top picks via separate trades for

Mitchell Balmas and Maxim Trepanier, respectively, plus their own first-round choice.

Saint John had a 9.5 per cent chance of getting top spot and Quebec had a five per cent chance. Saint John owned Baie-Comeau’s pick from the deal that sent goalie Alex D’Orio to the Drakkar in 2019.

Gatineau won the lottery with the Halifax pick while No. 2 overall came via the Acadie-Bathurst selection.

The draft is scheduled to take place online for the first time in the league’s history on June 5 and 6.

Round 1 will occur on Friday, June 5, with Rounds 2-14 set for the following day.