The first big milestone of the Seattle Kraken offseason comes tonight with the 2025 NHL Draft Lottery, which will be televised on ESPN in the United States starting at 4:00 pm PT. And there is a twist this year: For the first time the Lottery will be broadcast “live,” with the draft order revealed to the teams and viewing fans in real time.

The Lottery sets the order of the top 16 picks of the first round of the NHL Draft. The Kraken enter the Lottery in sixth position, and with the sixth-highest odds to move up to the No. 1 overall pick.

How does the Lottery work? How did Seattle end up with the sixth-best Lottery odds? Why does the Lottery matter so much for Seattle? And who could be there when the Kraken pick? Let’s dig into those questions and more in this 2025 NHL Draft preview.

The plan is to return after the Lottery with quick thoughts on a few potential draft candidates once the Kraken pick is fixed. Beyond that, we also have our annual 2025 NHL Draft “data-only watchlist” coming soon. (Check out the mid-season version here.) So, keep it here on Sound Of Hockey for your continuing 2025 NHL Draft coverage.

NHL Draft Lottery primer

The NHL Draft’s default selection rule situates teams in reverse order of the final regular season standings, with “ties” broken in the same manner as they would be for playoff qualification. As mentioned, the NHL Draft Lottery is a process that can re-order the top of the NHL Draft, but it impacts the first 16 picks only. The second half of the first round and all ensuing rounds still follow the default order and take playoff success into account.

Why does the NHL Draft Lottery exist?

The Lottery is meant to decrease the unintended anti-competitive incentives that result when bad teams are given the best draft picks—particularly in a sport where a single superstar can make a big difference.

Of course, we’d be naive to think the incentive to “tank” for a better draft pick doesn’t still exist even with the NHL Draft Lottery. But under the Lottery system the “worst” team in the league has only a 25.5 percent chance of drafting first overall rather than 100 percent.

In a draft with a singular Connor Bedard or a Gavin McKenna-level superstar, this could make a big difference in the behavior of NHL front offices. The system attempts to strike a balance between giving weaker teams a chance at the best talent while maintaining the integrity of competition.

How does the NHL Draft Lottery work?

Each of the 16 teams that does not qualify for the NHL playoffs is assigned weighted Lottery odds based on the reverse standings order. Teams are then assigned a portion of 1,001 four-number combinations based on their Lottery odds. (See the full list here.) In other words, the team with the fewest standings points has the best Lottery odds and most four-number combinations, the team with the second-fewest standings points has the second-best Lottery odds and second-most number combinations, and so forth.

The NHL Draft Lottery then utilizes 14 ping pong balls, which are placed into a machine that randomizes the balls, and releases four sequentially.

The 2025 NHL Draft Lottery will occur May 5. Teams with the top-5 odds at the No. 1 overall pick …

– San Jose (25.5%)
– Chicago (13.5%)
– Nashville (11.5%)
– Philadelphia (9.5%)
– Boston (8.5%) pic.twitter.com/KLQEi3MAKv

— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) April 29, 2025

There are two drawings. The team with the four-digit combination corresponding to the sequence of this first drawing “wins” the Lottery. “Winning” means that the team moves up 10 selection order spots. If the team finishes in the bottom 11 in the standings, that team moves to the No. 1 overall pick.

If the “winning” team finished 12 to 16 from last in the standings, then that team does not go to No. 1, but instead only moves up the maximum 10 selections. For example, if the No. 13 team “wins” the first drawing, it moves up to the No. 3 pick.

The process is then repeated a second time with the only difference being that on this second draw, teams can only move up as high the No. 2 overall pick. If the team that “won” the first drawing wins again, there is a re-draw until a different team wins. (In the rare circumstance that the No. 12 team “wins” the first Lottery draw and moves up to the No. 2 overall spot, this second draw can move a team up only as high as the No. 3 pick.)

After the second draw is completed, the remaining teams are then slotted based on the default order. Accordingly, no team can “fall” more than two draft spots in the Lottery. For example, the team with the best lottery odds can only move down as far as the No. 3 pick.

For those who want to follow the NHL Draft Lottery interactively, PuckPedia has an online tool where you can input the ping pong ball numbers as they arrive and generate live odds for each team prevailing. That said, I presume ESPN and other networks will have a similar display on their broadcasts.

Seattle’s Lottery position

The Seattle Kraken finished the 2024-25 NHL regular season with 76 points – a five-point erosion from last season’s results and 24 points short of the 2022-23 playoff campaign. After an offseason in which the team wanted to aggressively improve and return to the playoff mix, it was a disappointing outcome that led, at least in part, to the team parting ways with head coach Dan Bylsma.

Seattle’s point total was the fourth lowest in the NHL, tied with the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers. But Seattle “won” the tie-breaker because the Kraken had a higher number of regulation victories than either of those clubs. Since “winning” a tie-breaker is bad for a team’s reverse-standings-order-based Lottery odds, Boston is fourth, Philadelphia is fifth, and Seattle is sixth.

As calculated by Tankathon, each Lottery team’s odds of picking at any given selection are as follows:

In other words, for example, the San Jose Sharks have a 25.5 percent chance of selecting first, 18.8 percent chance of selecting second, and 55.7 percent chance of selecting third.

For the Seattle Kraken, the odds are as follows:

• 7.5 percent chance of moving up to No. 1 (by virtue of winning the first drawing)
• 7.7 percent chance of moving up to No. 2 (by virtue of winning the second drawing)
• .2 percent chance of moving up to No. 3 (by virtue of winning the second drawing after Detroit wins the first)
• 34.1 percent chance of remaining at No. 6 (because no teams below Seattle “win” the Lottery)
• 41.4 percent chance of moving down to No. 7 (because one team below Seattle “wins” the Lottery)
• 9.1 percent chance of moving down to No. 8 (because two teams below Seattle “win”).

Overall, there is a 15.4 percent chance Seattle’s pick position improves, 34.1 percent chance it stays at No. 6 overall, and 50.5 percent chance it diminishes.

The importance of the NHL Draft Lottery

Historical analysis suggests that the projected career production of a draft pick drops off steeply from the No. 1 pick onward. Last year, my crude Data Score method had a difference between the first overall prospect on my watchlist (Macklin Celebrini) and the fifth (Sam Dickinson) of similar magnitude to the difference between the fifth and 60th prospects.

As for the 2025 NHL Draft, it looks like there will be only two Data Score standouts (forward Michael Misa and defenseman Matthew Schaefer) followed by a significant flattening. This underscores that immense organizational value can flow from winning the NHL Draft Lottery. Should the Kraken win the Lottery, the team will be in a position to select a projected No. 1 defenseman (an organizational need) or first-line goal-scoring forward (another need). While neither Misa nor Schaefer project at the level of a Connor Bedard or Macklin Celebrini, they are a clear step ahead of the players Seattle will otherwise be examining a rung (or two) down.

2025 NHL Draft names to monitor

“[Matthew] Schaefer is still the overwhelming favorite [to go first overall],” said Cam Robinson of Elite Prospects on the most recent Called Up: The Prospects Podcast. And “Michael Misa will be second overall on most draft lists.” After that, “there’s going to be an incredible amount of variance on lists this year,” Robinson said, while noting Porter Martone and James Hagens are likely in the next tier.

“[Anton Frondell] is a name that I continue to hear in the same breath as Misa’s, among teams that potentially have the opportunity to to pick high in this draft,” added Robinson’s co-host (and good friend of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast) Chris Peters. Beyond those names, “[i]t’s not the most exciting class,” Peters cautioned.

With that in mind, we’re likely looking at a relatively volatile spring for public draft consensus. Very few final lists are out yet, but we have a few good “early” indicators. NHL Central Scouting publishes its final list annually for the U18 World Championships that begin in late April, and this year was no exception. With no goalies projected to break into the top mix, here are the top 16 North American and European skaters from this independent scouting organization:

TSN’s Bob McKenzie develops a list each year that most consider the best public insight into what teams and their scouts think of the class. Here are his NHL Draft Lottery top 16 prospects:

Finally, here are the top 16 prospects in Data Score:

It’s fairly likely one of these players will hear his name called by the Seattle Kraken in the first round on June 27. We’ll get one step closer to figuring out who that will be with Monday’s NHL Draft Lottery.

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