May
NHL Draft Lottery
The 2023 NHL Draft Lottery will be held tonight, May 8th, at NHL Network’s studio. The lottery is used to determine the order of selection for the first 16 picks in the first round of the 2023 NHL Draft.
The 2023 NHL Draft Lottery will consist of two drawings, with limits on both the number of selections the 32nd-ranked team from the regular season can fall in the draft order. The 32nd ranked team can fall no lower than third overall and the number of selections a team can “move up” is 10 spots. Thus, only the top 11 seeds in the 2023 NHL Draft Lottery will be eligible to win the first overall selection in the 2023 NHL Draft.
Participants are the teams that didn’t qualify for the Playoffs or the teams that have acquired the first round drafting positions of those non-playoff teams.
For each of the drawings, 14 balls will be placed in the machine which will select four balls. The resulting four-number series (without regard to selection order) will be matched against a chart that shows all possible combinations and the team to which each combination was assigned.
The allocation of odds for the 1st Lottery Draw of the 2023 NHL Draft Lottery is as follows:
Anaheim Ducks 18.5%
Columbus Blue Jackets 13.5%
Chicago Blackhawks 11.5%
San Jose Sharks 9.5%
Montreal Canadiens 8.5%
Arizona Coyotes 7.5%
Philadelphia Flyers 6.5%
Washington Capitals 6.0%
Detroit Red Wings 5.0%
St. Louis Blues 3.5%
Vancouver Canucks 3.0%
Ottawa Senators 2.5%*
Buffalo Sabres 2.0%
Pittsburgh Penguins 1.5%
Nashville Predators 0.5%
Calgary Flames 0.5%
- Under the terms of a March 1, 2023, trade, the Ottawa Senators will transfer their first-round pick in the 2023 NHL Draft to the Arizona Coyotes if it is not a top-five pick. If it becomes a top-five pick as a result of the 2023 NHL Draft Lottery, Ottawa will retain the pick and instead transfer to Arizona its first-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft.
2023 NHL Draft Black Book update
We are right in the middle of our busiest stretch of the season at HockeyProspect.com. We are approximately one month away from the release of our 2023 NHL Draft Black Book. Our scouts are busy writing their profiles from their respective areas and for some players, they are even doing some final Instat video viewings to make their evaluation more complete. We are going to begin our final ranking list process this week. This involves multiple meetings as we make our way towards book release day.
This will be the 12th edition of the Black Book since we start producing this book in 2012. Prior to that we had our classic NHL Draft Guide that we used as a resource for NHL staffers, media and fans. We’re confident this edition of the Black Book will be our best and our scouts are very proud of the work we have done to establish the Black Book as the premiere resource for the NHL Draft over the past decade.
We introduced some ratings attributes to our player profiles a few years ago. Readers can expect two new categories in this year’s edition of our Black Book to go along with our ratings of Hockey Sense, Compete, Skill, Skating and Misc. We will keep the two new categories a secret until we are ready for release day. Our ratings have been very popular with our customers based on the feedback we have received. The ratings also assist our scouts as the initial step in the ranking process which begins with our first list of the season.
Once again our “NHL-like” team list will be included. Contrary to what some people think, NHL teams don’t go to their draft tables with 220 players on their list. Their lists are much more condensed and we try to replicate the process as a 33rd team. In past years we’ve had 110 ish players on our list including goalies, the exact number fluctuates each year.
We saw some interesting hockey at the most recent World Under-18 in Switzerland, but unfortunately this tournament is not what it used to be. With Russia not being at the tournament, it does hurt the overall pool of talent. Canada is forced to throw a team together at the last minute with players eliminated from playoff action. It is the only country in this tournament that doesn’t have yearly events with their U-18 team with the only exception being the non IIHF Hlinka tournament in August. Every other team plays in various U-18 tournaments over the course of the season, which makes it easier to build chemistry between players. Nevertheless, there were good performances from some top NHL draft eligibles at this event, which includes the top line for Team USA with Will Smith, Gabriel Perreault and Ryan Leonard. We can’t leave out the great work by Dalibor Dvorsky and team Slovakia at this event, it’s really great to see the emergence of Slovakia over the past few seasons.
We’re currently working on our 2024 and 2025 NHL Draft sections as well. We will have a Top-32 ranking for the 2024 NHL Draft in the book and profiles of players from both the 2024 and 2025 draft classes. Based on feedback and multiple other reasons, the 2023 NHL Draft Black Book will no longer include the game reports section.
Enjoy the draft lottery tonight!