The NHL Draft Lottery Luck Index: 30 Years of Ping-Pong Balls and Broken Dreams
Since 1995, 31 lotteries have reshaped franchises, handed generational talents to teams that didn't deserve them on merit, and left the most deserving losers empty-handed. We ranked every franchise's lottery luck - and some of the results are infuriating.
Every May, 16 fan bases hold their breath while a machine spits out four ping-pong balls and someone walks away with the thing that can change a franchise for 20 years. The NHL Draft Lottery has been running since 1995, and in 31 drawings, the sport's cruelest math has revealed itself: the worst team gets the best pick barely over half the time. The other 48%? Chaos.
I went through every single lottery since day one, tracked every team's odds, every outcome, every heartbreak, and built what I think is the most complete picture of which franchises have been riding genuinely lucky draws - and which ones have been robbed by probability.
The Big Takeaway: The lottery does roughly what it's supposed to - the worst team wins most of the time. But the exceptions are spectacular. Edmonton won four #1 picks in six years, including Connor McDavid from the third seed. The New York Islanders just won the whole thing in 2025 from the 10th seed at 3.5% odds. And Buffalo lost Connor McDavid despite having the best odds in the field. The lottery is fair in the aggregate. It is devastating in the specific.
The lottery has gone through four distinct eras since 1995, and understanding the rule changes explains a lot about the data. Early on (1995-2012), the winning team could only move up a maximum of four spots, meaning only the five worst teams could ever win the #1 pick. That rule actually kept the original lottery somewhat tame - you'd get upsets, but they were bounded upsets.
From 2013-2015, they removed the ceiling entirely. Any non-playoff team could win the drawing and automatically get #1. Then from 2016-2020 they awarded the top three picks via lottery, spreading the chaos further. The current format (2021-present) does two drawings for picks 1-2, and teams can only jump a maximum of ten spots - which is why the 2025 New York Islanders winning from seed 10 was the most extreme outcome the modern rules allow.
The 2013-2015 "open floor" era was a disaster for the worst teams. All three times, the #1 seed failed to win - Florida lost to Colorado (MacKinnon), Buffalo lost to Florida (Ekblad), and Buffalo again lost to Edmonton (McDavid). Zero for three. That's the era that produced the most famous lottery heartbreak in history, and the league quickly moved to cap the jump distance after that.
Every lottery. Every #1 pick. The winner's seed. Their approximate odds. How many spots they jumped. Red rows are upsets - the worst team didn't get the pick.
| Year | Worst Team | #1 Pick Team | Winner Seed | Odds | Jump | Player Selected | Notes |
|---|
Four charts that reveal the shape of 30 years of lottery luck.
Who's Actually Won the Most #1 Overall Picks
Odds When You Won the #1 Pick
Seed 1 Outcomes Since 1995
How Far Did They Jump? (Top Lottery Leaps to #1 Pick)
These are the moments the lottery gods smiled on the wrong team - where a franchise entered with long odds, defied the math, and walked away with a franchise-altering pick. Ranked by how improbable the win actually was.
These are the teams that did everything "right" by NHL tanking standards - finished last or near last, entered with the best or near-best odds - and still left empty-handed. Some of these are just bad luck. Some are genuinely franchise-altering tragedies.
"In 2015, Buffalo had a 25% chance of winning Connor McDavid. Edmonton had 11.5%. You know how this ends."
A luck rating based on how many #1 picks a franchise won relative to what probability said they should expect. Over 1.0 = lucky. Under 1.0 = robbed by math. Includes all franchises with meaningful lottery history.
Lottery Luck Rating by Franchise
The most controversial run in lottery history. Between 2010 and 2015, Edmonton won the #1 overall pick four times. They were the worst or second-worst team in the league in most of those years - so it's not like they were robbing anyone blind. But by 2015, when they won Connor McDavid despite having only the third-best odds, even the most charitable interpretation of the data had to acknowledge that Edmonton's run had entered statistically extraordinary territory.
The rough math: entering with odds averaging around 20% across those four winning years, the probability of winning four out of six appearances is somewhere in the range of 0.5-1%. Not impossible. But extraordinary.
"Four lotteries. Hall, Nugent-Hopkins, Yakupov, McDavid. And still they missed the playoffs for years. Winning the lottery turns out not to fix everything."
The postscript to the Edmonton run is what makes it interesting. Four #1 picks in six years and the Oilers still had a miserable decade. Taylor Hall was traded for Adam Larsson. Nail Yakupov flamed out. It took the arrival of McDavid - a truly generational talent - to finally give them a sustained playoff presence. The lottery gave Edmonton an unprecedented windfall. They mostly squandered three of the four picks.
No team has a more complicated relationship with the lottery than the Buffalo Sabres. They went to the lottery with top odds four times between 2014 and 2021. They won twice (Rasmus Dahlin in 2018, Owen Power in 2021). Both are excellent players. That sounds fine until you remember what they lost.
In 2014, Buffalo was the worst team in the NHL. Florida (second-worst) jumped them and took Aaron Ekblad. Fine - Ekblad is great, but he's not generational. Buffalo recovered.
In 2015, Buffalo was again the worst team. Edmonton - the third seed with 11.5% odds - won the lottery and selected Connor McDavid. The best player of his generation went to a team that wasn't even the most deserving loser. Buffalo's 25% odds came up empty, and the guy they were projected to take went to Alberta instead.
"Buffalo was the worst team in hockey in 2015. They had a one-in-four chance at Connor McDavid. Edmonton had a one-in-nine chance. I don't need to tell you how this ended."
The Sabres eventually got their lottery wins - Dahlin was a franchise left-shot defenseman, Power is a blue chip talent. But they'll always be the franchise that had the best odds at both Ekblad and McDavid and walked away empty on the biggest two. That specific combination of bad luck is singular in lottery history.
On May 5, 2025, the NHL Draft Lottery was held live on television for the first time in its 30-year history. The San Jose Sharks - the worst team in hockey for the second consecutive year - had around 25.5% composite odds of landing the top pick (18.5% in the direct draw, plus scenarios where lower seeds win but can't reach #1). The New York Islanders, entering at seed 10 with 3.5% odds and a maximum jump of 10 spots (which would land them exactly at #1), were barely an afterthought in the pre-show discussion.
You know what happened. The Islanders won. From 10th to 1st. A 3.5% ticket came in, and the Sharks - who had already lost the 2025 lottery despite being the favorite the year before too - were left holding a 2nd overall pick for the second straight year they finished last.
By the numbers, that 2025 NYI win was the least-likely outcome in modern lottery history. The previous record-holder was probably the 2000 lottery, when NY Islanders won from seed 5 with roughly 9% odds to take Rick DiPietro. NYI now hold the record twice - both times winning from outside the top 4 seeds. Whatever lottery karma they've stored up, it's extraordinary.
Odds of the #1 Pick Winner Over Time
Thirteen franchises have never won a #1 overall pick in the lottery era. Some of them are good teams who rarely enter (good problem to have). Others have entered, had legitimate odds, and been bounced repeatedly. These are the ones that hurt most.
Philadelphia Flyers (2007): Were the worst team in hockey. Chicago - fifth seed - won the draw, moved up four spots, and took Patrick Kane. One of the most consequential lottery losses ever.
Detroit Red Wings (2020): Finished with the worst record in the NHL after a decade of sustained excellence finally ran out. The COVID lottery had two phases, and Detroit - who entered Phase 1 with the best odds - didn't win. Then in Phase 2, the NY Rangers (one of eight qualifying-round teams) won at 12.5% odds. Detroit fell to 4th and took Lucas Raymond. Not a disaster, but they were owed Alexis Lafrenière on the math.
Anaheim Ducks (2023): Had 18.5% odds - best in the field - for the Connor Bedard lottery. Chicago, third in the order at 11.5%, jumped to #1. Bedard went to Chicago. Anaheim had to settle for second - Mason McTavish year. They'll be fine eventually. But they were the most deserving loser of the Bedard sweepstakes and the ping-pong balls said no.
Carolina Hurricanes (2003): Were the worst team, entered as the #1 seed, and watched Florida (seed 4) win the drawing. Florida then turned around and traded the pick to Pittsburgh, who selected Marc-Andre Fleury. The team that deserved the pick wasn't even the one who ended up holding it.
"The lottery has handed at least two #1 picks to franchises that didn't win it themselves - Fleury and Nash both came via Florida winning and immediately trading. That's a quirk that adds another layer of chaos to the whole thing."
Methodology & Data Notes
This analysis covers all 31 NHL Draft Lotteries from 1995-2025. The "Luck Rating" is an approximated metric calculated as actual #1 picks won divided by estimated expected wins (sum of approximate odds in years a team entered the lottery). Pre-2013 odds are approximated from historical records; modern era odds come from official NHL lottery documents. A few important notes:
- 1999: The Atlanta Thrashers received the #1 pick as an expansion franchise. Chicago (seed 8) won the lottery draw but could only move up four spots. This is treated as a special case and excluded from the main luck calculations.
- 2002-2003: Florida won the lottery both years but traded the resulting #1 pick before the draft - to Columbus (Nash) and Pittsburgh (Fleury). The winning team in these analyses is the team that made the #1 selection.
- 2005: The entire NHL - all 30 teams - entered the lockout lottery. Pittsburgh won (Crosby). Treated as a special case in the data.
- 2020: The COVID-modified two-phase lottery is noted as special. Detroit finished last but fell to 4th. The odds shown reflect Phase 2 (qualifying-round teams).
- 2025 player: Matthew Schaefer was selected 1st overall by the NY Islanders at the June 2025 draft.
- Luck Ratings for teams with fewer than 3 meaningful lottery appearances should be interpreted cautiously due to small sample size.
