The 2026 NHL Draft Lottery goes down tonight, with teams looking to get their hands on Gavin McKenna or Ivar Stenberg at the top of the draft. The Calgary Flames, in particular, are looking to land their first-ever top-three selection, heading into the lottery with the fourth-best odds.
Winning a lottery can change the direction of a franchise, just look at the New York Islanders before and after lucking their way into landing Matthew Schaefer. So how does the lottery actually work? Let’s break it down.
When is the NHL Draft Lottery?
The 2026 NHL Draft Lottery will be help at 7pm EST. tonight, May 5th. The lottery will be aired live on Sportsnet in Canada.
How the NHL Draft Lottery works
The lottery recently underwent a slight change last year, and that will also be reflected this year. Instead of watching a countdown of picks from 16, the lottery balls will now be drawn live on TV. In the past, this all happened behind the scenes beforehand.
There are 14 ping pong balls used in the lottery, allowing for 1,001 different combinations. Each team is assigned certain combinations based on where they finished in the standings. The lower in the standings, the more combos they are assigned and the greater odds they have. Below is a quick refresher on the odds going into the night, courtesy of tankathon.com.
When the draw is run, the NHL has accounting professionals perform it as an unbiased third party. They run the lottery to figure out the first overall pick. A change made to this format a few years ago was that a team could move up at most 10 spots in the draft order, meaning only teams ranked 1 to 11 on the list could win the first overall pick, as shown in the odds above.
If someone outside of the top eleven wins the first round of the lottery, they would move up ten spots, and the team with the best odds would remain in first. Then, after the first team is determined, the process repeats itself to determine the second overall selection as well. The same rules noted above apply, with a team only able to move up ten spots, and the same processes are followed.
Once the first and second winners have been determined, the rest of the order is based on the original lottery odds in descending order.
Calgary Flames outlook
Sitting with the fourth-best odds thanks to a win in game 82 of the regular season, the Flames’ outlook is good but not ideal. As it stands, they can still enter the draft picking anywhere from first to sixth. Below are their odds of landing in each spot.
| Pick | Calgary Flames Odds |
|---|---|
| 1st | 9.5% |
| 2nd | 9.5% |
| 3rd | 0.3% |
| 4th | 15.4% |
| 5th | 44.6% |
| 6th | 20.8% |
As mentioned, the Flames situation isn’t ideal. As it stands, they have a much larger chance of being bumped to 5th or 6th overall than staying put in the top four. For a team that has only picked in the top four once in franchise history, being bumped out of the top four would be an incredibly disappointing scenario after coming so close.
With that said, they do have a 19% chance at landing their first-ever top-two pick in franchise history and enter the lottery in the bottom four for the first time since 2014. In other words, there are many worse places to be.
Unfortunately, the team that has finished fourth overall has never actually won the draft lottery in the two-lottery system. Depending on how you look at it, that means the outlook isn’t great for the Flames, or the fourth overall slot is due after many years of disappointment.
As the fourth last team, the Flames will have 95 of 1,001 combos assigned to them in the lottery machine. To find all the combos assigned to the Flames, check out the NHL’s official lottery page.
May the odds be in your favour.