Why doesn’t NHL broadcast LIVE the draft lottery number draws?

[BB79]

They have to rig it to help the suffering markets

No wonder Chicago got Bedard. They've struggled so mightily over the last 15 years

 

[Terry Yake]

isn't the lottery winner revealed first during the number draw?

why broadcast it when everyone would get the answer they've been waiting for right away?

 

[Oddbob]

So in your oppinion, finishing 6th should have the same chances as barely missing the playoffs. All this while finishing 5th would double the chances and finishing 4th would triple the chances of the #6 spot.

The main reason why you need many balls is the fact that otehrwise the chances at the bottom change way too much. In the current system, the difference between #2 and #5 is about 40% more chances for #2, in your system would be 2.5 times higher chances for #2....

You could simply give 1 ball to 16th, 2 to 15th, 3 to 14th and so on. Still much better than number combos.

 

[Brodeur]

You could simply give 1 ball to 16th, 2 to 15th, 3 to 14th and so on. Still much better than number combos.

Welcome to 1993! Time to build a hopper to fit 136 balls.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Pens are in need to another saviour--we know it is coming

First we need saviour coaching/ownership/management that isn’t f***ing useless.

 

[Oddbob]

Welcome to 1993! Time to build a hopper to fit 136 balls.

Wouldn't need to be that big. Even now with the balls the do have they leave plenty of space.

 

[Brodeur]

Wouldn't need to be that big. Even now with the balls the do have they leave plenty of space.

It's really kinda amusing that you think this is the solution. The NBA realized 30 years ago that it wasn't.

 

[Oddbob]

It's really kinda amusing that you think this is the solution. The NBA realized 30 years ago that it wasn't.

Why? It is simple and works. There is no need for a complicated system, when the whole point of the entry draft is for the teams that are bad to get top picks.

 

[Brodeur]

Why? It is simple and works. There is no need for a complicated system, when the whole point of the entry draft is for the teams that are bad to get top picks.

Would it be more TV friendly to do a live draw? Sure. But even for the 1993 NBA lottery, the draw was done behind closed doors and they did the envelope reveal presumably for drama. Similarly the NHL did the same for the 2005 lottery.

You claim that the old way would help the bad teams get the top picks, but the NBA 1993 procedure would make it slightly worse for the bottom three teams. And then the odds would be better for the teams that were closer to the playoffs.

I think you're making the 14 ball procedure seem more complicated than it is. NBA / Ernst & Young switched to it in 1994 and has remained. NHL has used it ever since the lottery was added in 1995.

https://www.mlb.com/news/how-the-mlb-draft-lottery-works

The MLB (unnecessarily) added a draft lottery recently. The procedure that they decided with their auditing firm?

The results revealed during the broadcast were actually determined about two hours earlier in an alternate location attended by Major League Baseball officials, an independent auditor from PricewaterhouseCoopers who ensured the integrity of the procedure and a pool reporter, J.J. Cooper of Baseball America. Just like the events conducted for years in the NBA and NHL, a case of ping pong balls, numbered 1-14, were loaded into a lottery machine manufactured by Smartplay.

Each MLB team that missed the 2022 postseason was assigned a series of four-number combinations to be drawn from the machine. The 1,001 possible sequences were distributed according to win-loss record, ranging from clubs like Washington (55-107), Oakland (60-102) and Pittsburgh (62-100) which each held 16.5 percent or 165 of the combinations, to Milwaukee (86-76), which had just two. (The 1,001st combination is not assigned to any team.)

The nice thing with that procedure is that you can tweak the odds without needing to add more balls. Ie, if a league were to add expansion teams, you could control the odds more precisely rather than just adding another ball.

If the NHL were to expand by two teams, your procedure now potentially has 171 balls in the hopper with the worst team only having a 10.5% chance of winning outright.

 

[AssaultPK]

If the lottery was rigged Matthews would not have went to foronto,

But also; LAINE WOULDN’T HAVE WENT TO WINNIPEG

 

[nturn06]

You could simply give 1 ball to 16th, 2 to 15th, 3 to 14th and so on. Still much better than number combos.

Yikes, much much worse....

Just to emphasize the issues

• in this system finishing 14th tripples your lottery chances compared with finishing 16th, and finishing 13th quadruples your chances. Last year there were 2 points separating #13 from #16
• The worst team in the league, a.k.a. the Sharks, has about 11.7% chances of winning the lottery... The second and third worst team in the league have an 11.0% and 10.3% chances of winning the lottery.
• The 6 best teams missing the playoffs have a combined chance of 15.4% of winning the lottery... In other words, it is 1.5 times more likely that a team barely missing the playoffs wins the draft, than the worst team in the league.
• The system would require 136 balls, and much more if you want to add weights... This would create a logistical nightmare.

And I can keep going

 

[SomeDude]

“Why doesn’t the NHL do this”

Receives dozens of reasons why

“Yeah, but why else wouldn’t they?????”

 

[1909]

All 16 teams out of the Playoffs should have equal chances. No more races for mediocrity. No more tanking.

Put 16 balls in a hat and pick. That’s all.

For the following rounds, just do as now.

 

[Golden_Jet]

Didn’t they try the balls once, and the machine jammed on the NYR’s.

 

[Ford Prefect]

Yeah, if the NHL was rigging lotteries McDavid is probably in Toronto Arizona Philadelphia, and Matthews is probably in Arizona or the Leafs win one of the Stamkos/Tavares lottos.

Either way, if you think a big 4 Accounting firm is going to risk its reputation for the NHL, I don't know what to tell people who think that.

There, corrected that for you. Having McDavid in Toronto would have done little to achieve what the NHL has wanted for 40+ years: getting sustained attention and interest in the US market. Crosby and Ovie certainly helped, but Connor may go down as the greatest player in history. The largest markets that had a chance of getting him was Arizona at 3 and Philly at 7. Arizona would have been a consideration; it might have put them over the top in getting a new arena built and cementing them there for the long term, and it is the 12th largest media market in the country. It could draw expansion hockey and expansion interest from closer geographic areas (Houston, San Diego, San Franscisco, Vegas which didn't have a team yet) which may be the largest unrealized growth area that the NHL has in North America.

But while Philly is an established franchise, it is also the 4th largest media market in the country* and in the east where the highest amount of viewership is concentrated. They'd be playing Boston, Rangers/Islanders/Devils, Florida, Detroit, Washington, etc. more frequently (I believe this was before they moved to a more balanced schedule). If the fix was in I believe that would be more likely than Toronto. The Canadian market was pretty much a done deal already.


* according to stationindex.com - Top 100 Television Markets - Station Index

 

[ManofSteel55]

They aren't going to boost TV ratings by televising the behind the scenes number draws. Plus there are probably some secrets the company they contract to has that they don't want potential competitors to know. It's a secretive process, but not for the reasons the consipiracy minded think.

 

[Brodeur]

They aren't going to boost TV ratings by televising the behind the scenes number draws. Plus there are probably some secrets the company they contract to has that they don't want potential competitors to know. It's a secretive process, but not for the reasons the consipiracy minded think.

It's not too secretive, just not particularly exciting to watch. One guy to operate the machine and one guy with the sheet of combinations to look up the winner. MLB uses the same procedure with a different auditing firm (PWC) than who the NBA/NHL use (E&Y). The actual drawing doesn't even take two minutes, Bettman spends more time reading out the procedure.



Rewatching the 2023 drawing now and they spend 90 seconds just loading each ball individually into the machine while calling out what number it is. Shades of Spaceballs.

 

[Brodeur]

Has a date for the lottery been announced yet?
If you really want to add intrigue to it move it to the day of the draft!!

 

[Mav3rick07]

Wasn't it done live during the Lafreniere draft ?

 

[Brodeur]

Wasn't it done live during the Lafreniere draft ?

That was the outlier draft where they had placeholder teams for the initial draw (June 26) due to the play-in round. This was done with the "choose 4 balls out of 14" procedure.

When the placeholder team won they had to do a second drawing (August 10) based on who lost the play-in round. Since those eight teams had equal odds it was easy enough to do a draw with one ball for each team.

 

[Filthy Dangles]

Didn’t they try the balls once, and the machine jammed on the NYR’s.

Hey, this happened to me too, once....

 

[Warden of the North]

It's boring TV and, even live, people would still think it's fixed.

This is the correct answer.

Being shown live will in no way stop the conspiracy theories.

 

[The Nemesis]

They aren't going to boost TV ratings by televising the behind the scenes number draws. Plus there are probably some secrets the company they contract to has that they don't want potential competitors to know. It's a secretive process, but not for the reasons the consipiracy minded think.

It's not secretive at all. We know exactly how it works, it's just boring and there's no real benefit since the conspiracy-minded are still going to find a way to claim it's all fixed even if you have a long unbroken and unedited camera shot showing the whole thing. The only thing people care about is the final order and the most dramatic way they can do that is with the complete lottery team countdown as they do now.

 

[SensHulk]

Y’all roasted me for suggesting this idea last year…and here the nhl is deciding to do this. Everyone that roasted me, stick this up your ass

NHL Draft Lottery to be held live on TV, will be 'really compelling' for fans | NHL.com

No. 1 pick will be chosen in real time with fans following along

www.nhl.com

 

[Run the Jewels]

I feel the league can get more engagement by releasing all the number combinations for each team and basically get each fan base to track along if their ‘numbers’ get called LIVE, like a real jackpot lottery draw

They obviously film this ahead of time and make it available for transparency but the long drawn out countdown of the pre-flight results is just lame and boring. This would be super exciting as everyone finds out live on the spot

So in summary: just do whatever you’re doing in the video below but do it LIVE and release those number combos. Thoughts?

They're concerned it would get better ratings than their playoff games.