Randy SavoieWhen the Edmonton Oilers won last year’s draft lottery it solidified a dynasty that almost no one in hockey, excluding Oilers fans and management, wanted to see. The lottery win gave the Oilers their fourth first overall pick in six years and immediately questions were raised whether one team should be able to amass so many top draft picks, let alone first-overall selections, in such a short amount of time.
It’s not surprising that this is getting more push given the fact the Oilers are consistently terrible and would have the second best odds to draft first overall again if the season ended today, although they sit barely ahead of the last-place Toronto Maple Leafs in the standings. Toronto’s three games in hand could easily lead to the Oilers finishing last once again and potentially getting their fifth first-overall pick in seven years.
General managers are understandably upset and some have even brought the issue up at their annual spring meetings in Boca Raton, Florida. Although no changes are coming, some suggested teams should only be allowed to pick first overall once in a certain amount of years, or even in the top three. In an interview with Mike Zeisberger with The Toronto Sun, St. Louis Blues general manger Doug Armstrong said “I think people are concerned that the wrong teams are being rewarded based on luck,” clearly referring to teams such as the Oilers.
General managers like Armstrong are likely annoyed that a team like the Oilers is consistently able to acquire high draft picks while still maintaining consistent fan support, while other teams in less fanatical hockey markets seemingly need high profile draft picks to draw in fans.
There’s a valid point in wanting the elite talent at the top of the draft spread out across the league, but is there even a problem to begin with? The Oilers’ incredible run at the draft isn’t problem, but rather a statistical improbability. The Oilers should pick close to where they finish in the standings, because they’ve been bad for so long, and the draft is there to aid teams that finish near the bottom of the standings despite how lucky one team may get. The Oilers have been awful for the better part of a decade, but implementing additional changes to the draft lottery feels more like a failsafe mechanism to prevent them from drafting another talent like Auston Matthews than meaningful change. It may seem ridiculous to have a team like the Oilers in the running for another first-overall pick, but that’s the point of a lottery, it’s supposed to be random and not based on feelings. Besides, if it wasn’t for the draft lottery the Oilers would have only had two first-overall picks in the first place.
All of this comes at a time when this year’s draft lottery hasn’t been drawn yet. The 2016 draft lottery features the latest changes with an NBA-style lottery where the first three picks are lottery picks while the 30th place team only has a 20 per cent chance of winning the lottery. The last place team has a better chance of picking fourth than it does first.
The odds are so low that there is no need for any further changes to the draft lottery. The Oilers’ run of draft lottery supremacy may inspire some animosity from other teams, but a string of good luck doesn’t mean it’s broken. After all, a lottery is supposed to be random. That’s the point of it.
