from Mike Chambers of the Denver Post,
Tuesday’s NHL draft lottery in Toronto is bound to irritate Avalanche fans throughout North America if they don’t take the right approach. Which is, hope for the best (No. 1 pick) but prepare for the worst (No. 4).
The worst isn’t that bad. No other team in the 31-team in the league is guaranteed to go into the June draft with a top-four pick.
It’s just how it works. The Avs, who own the best chance at the No. 1 pick because they own Ottawa’s first-round pick — and the Senators finished with the NHL’s fewest points — have a league-best 18.5 percent chance at the first pick. Their percentages of 16.5 for the second pick, 14.4 for the third and 50.6 for the fourth also are league-highs.
The latter percentage is Colorado’s biggest because it ensures the Avs won’t move further down from fourth. No team can move down more than four spots. Back when the league featured 30 teams, the 30th-place team couldn’t move further than two spots down. Now it’s four....
Colorado has a glorious 2019 draft portfolio, which also includes its own first-, second- and third- round picks, and Ottawa’s third-rounder. That’s five picks in the first three rounds — indeed an impressive collection that Avalanche GM Joe Sakic and his staff corralled in part from the 2017 trade of Matt Duchene to Ottawa.
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