Abel to Yzerman

Abel to Yzerman

Local Reaction To The 2020 NHL Draft Lottery

06/27/2020 at 6:20am EDT

from Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News,

The Red Wings didn’t win much during this past regular season and added one more loss Friday.

The team failed to win Friday’s NHL Draft Lottery, and will wind up pickingfourth whenever the actual NHL Entry Draft will be held (probably in October).

But let the conspiracy theories begin, as a team who will be playing in the qualifying round in July/August will be picking first overall.

Despite a 2.5% of being drawn, the placeholder team from the qualifying round won the lottery, beating the odds for sure.

continued

from Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press,

The league announced in late May the lottery would feature the seven teams that were at the bottom of the standings at the time of the shutdown, plus eight qualifying-round losers. Since Friday’s Phase 1 saw a play-in team land the first pick, there will be a Phase 2 drawing after the qualifying round to determine the team’s identity.

What it boils down to is that a team the NHL deemed good enough to compete for the 2020 Stanley Cup can also win the right to draft Alexis Lafrenière, the consensus top pick. Meanwhile the Wings, who have fallen from 25th in 2016-17, 27th in 2017-18, and 28th in 2018-19 to rock bottom, got shafted.

“They have to do what they have to do,” Yzerman said. “Anything I say is going to be self-serving. They have to do what they have to do.”

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from Ansar Khan of Mlive,

Center Quinton Byfield of Sudbury (OHL) and left wing Tim Stuetzle of Mannheim (Germany) are widely expected to be taken second and third, in either order. If that is the case, the Red Wings will have the opportunity to select Jamie Drysdale of Erie (OHL), rated the top defenseman in the draft.

Other possible picks at No. 4 could include defensemen Jake Sanderson (U.S. National Team Development Program), center Cole Perfetti of Saginaw (OHL) and Swedish forwards Alexander Holtz (Djurgardens), Anton Lundell (HIFK) and Lucas Raymond (Frolunda).

Yzerman was not surprised the Red Wings dropped, noting they had only an 18.5 percent chance at the top pick and a 50.6 percent chance of falling to fourth. They finished 23 points behind the NHL’s next-worst team.

“Realistically, I’m prepared to be sitting here today not talking about the first pick,” Yzerman said during a media Zoom call. “The eight playoff teams (that lose in the qualifying round) had a 24.5 percent chance combined of getting the top pick. So, the odds were better that the first pick went to (one of) the bottom eight than to us.”

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Welcome to Abel to Yzerman, a Red Wing blog since 1977. No other site on the internet has better-researched, fact-laden and better prepared discussions than A2Y. Re-phrase: we do little research, find facts and stats highly overrated and claim little to no preparation. There are 19 readers of A2Y. No more, no less. All of them, except maybe one, are juvenile in nature. Reminding them of that in the comment section will only encourage them to prove that.