How does the NHL Draft Lottery work? Explaining the odds, rules for landing the No. 1 pick

Monday night, the NHL will find out the order of the first 16 picks in the 2025 NHL Draft, as the draft lottery is set to take place.

Unlike the NFL, the NHL does not immediately award the No. 1 pick in the draft to the last-place team. The league follows a similar strategy as the NBA and MLB, using a lottery system to determine the order of picks.

In recent years, the NHL has added a few restrictions and rules to the lottery process in order to ensure the worst teams have the higher picks. 

The Sporting News has fans covered on the rules, restrictions, and more to know about the draft lottery. 

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How does the NHL Draft Lottery work?

The 16 teams that do not make the playoffs are assigned an odds percentage based on where they finished in the standings.

The lower the team is, the higher their odds are at the top pick. Therefore, the team that finishes last has the best odds at landing the No. 1 pick, but it's not guaranteed. 

At the draft lottery, there will be two draws: one for the No. 1 pick and one for No. 2. This is a change from three drawings in the past for the top three picks. 

NHL Draft Lottery rules

The NHL implemented a few new changes to the rules of the lottery a couple of seasons ago that limit how far up certain teams can go. The 2025 draft is the fourth such year that these new restrictions have been put into place. 

One of the two new rules that have been implemented at the 2022 draft is that teams will be restricted from moving up more than 10 spots if they win one of the lottery draws. So whichever teams are slotted between No. 12-16 cannot get the No. 1 pick. If they do win either the No. 1 or No. 2 drawing, they will move up 10 spots in the order, but that is it. 

The other rule change is that teams cannot win the lottery more than twice in a five-year span. Any wins in the lottery prior to 2022 will not be counted toward this total, so 2022 marks the beginning of any team's five-year period. 

For example, if the Sharks were to win the draft lottery again this year, they would not be eligible to receive the No. 1 pick again until 2028, since they received the top pick in 2024 and 2025. 

After the first two picks have been determined, the rest of the field will be slotted in order of where they finished in the standings. This ensures that the team with the worst record cannot fall any further than third. 

NHL Draft Lottery odds 2025

Here is how the NHL lottery odds system is broken down. The rankings are determined by going backward in the standings, so the team that finishes worst is first. 

The Sharks finished with the worst record in the 2024-25 season, so they have the highest chance at landing the first overall pick. San Jose finished dead last in the NHL last season as well, winning the No. 1 overall pick and selecting Macklin Celebrini.