Tonight at 7:00 p.m. CST, you will be able to watch the NHL Draft Lottery on NBC (or SportsNet or whatever in Canada).
Right now, the Dallas Stars are probably going to be picking 9th overall. That’s great! Recent picks in that spot include Jacob Trouba, Dougie Hamilton, Logan Couture, and Michael Granlund! Less recent 9th picks include James Patrick and Brent Krahn, but never mind those.
Of course, “probably” is a meaningful term, as the lottery will determine the top three picks, potentially bumping teams down a notch. And with the Vegas Golden Knights determined to 1) Stick to that ridiculous moniker, and 2) Make a go of it as a hockey team, who knows how things will shake out?
As a reminder, here are the Stars’ odds of winding up in each of the below positions:
1st: 5.8%
2nd: 6.1%
3rd: 6.4%
4th: [n/a]
5th: [n/a]
6th: [n/a]
7th: [n/a]
8th: 33.7%
9th: 37.9%
10th: 9.5%
11th: 0.50% (this is a small number, for all you non-mathletes out there)
I’m sure the NHL will do its best to make this a fun, dramatic event, and that means they probably have an army of Best Buy Geek Squad folks on-hand to avoid the issues that plagued the last event involving Vegas.
In the meantime, go ahead and chat things up. Would you look at trading up in the draft? Will the Nolan/Nico decision actually become a real thing by draft time? Is it possible to trade draft lottery balls for one Google Hangout with Philipp Grubauer? Find out all this and more (or possibly much less) tonight.