NHL draft lottery luck can be fickle for teams like Leafs

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What’s the unlikely link between 1990s average joe Aki Berg and this season’s presumptive Calder Trophy winner Matthew Schaefer?

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Both defencemen are ping-pong ball prodigies of the draft lottery — Berg the first, Schaefer the latest, in the NHL’s evolving attempt to discourage the tactic known as tanking.

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The next due date is Tuesday night, when Penn State winger Gavin McKenna’s parent team is confirmed in a live show from the NHL Network studio in Secaucus, NJ.

There will be two draws among the 16 non-playoff teams, starting with first-overall pick, then remaining clubs going for No. 2 with real-time odds changing for viewers as the list shortens.

With a maximum of 10 spots a team can move up the draft order, only the bottom 11 are in the running for first overall. The best odds of 18.5% are held by 32nd-place Vancouver, which holds 185 of 1,000 lottery ball combinations, to 0.5% for Washington and St. Louis (only five combos each).

Clutching their prayer beads Tuesday will be the Maple Leafs, whose pick is only top five protected and would revert to Boston from a previous trade to acquire defenceman Brandon Carlo if Toronto drops one place from fifth.

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“I don’t concern myself with things I can’t control,” new Leafs general manager John Chayka said on Monday. “Of course, I’ll look a lot smarter if we win. That would help a lot.”

What are the Leafs odds of winning?

The odds are more than 58% Toronto could fall, versus the best-case scenario, getting No. 1 with its 8.5% ticket.

The National Basketball Association had been the first league to police teams suspected of folding their tent to better guarantee the first-overall pick. It instituted a lottery in 1985 after complaints that several bottom feeders, such as the Houston Rockets, weren’t trying very hard to escape the cellar.

The NBA’s lottery began with spinning a box of envelopes with each non-playoff team’s name inside.

After the NHL expanded by four teams in the early ‘90s, the top pick became more important for new clubs and those struggling in a league where parity was still years away.

The temptation to tank led the league to its weighted lottery in 1995 and a tradition of long shots getting to the top. With just a 4.2% chance, the Los Angeles Kings hadn’t bothered sending a hockey office rep to the league office in New York for the inaugural draw.

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Lester M. Wintz, one of their marketing execs, happened to be passing through town and was recruited.

He wound up getting the congratulatory handshake from commissioner Gary Bettman, though under rules of the day, L.A. only moved up four places, from seventh to third, where it selected Finnish native Berg.

In a defence-heavy first round, Ottawa — which had finished last of 26 teams — took Bryan Berard first, the Islanders selecting Wade Redden second.

Berg didn’t live up to his lofty draft status and was traded to the Leafs a few years later in his 600-game NHL career.

How has the lottery changed?

The limitation on how high teams could move up was finally expanded in 2015, giving even less advantage to the last-place team and re-distributing odds among all non-playoff entries.

From 2016-19, a further change determined the top three selections awarded through the lottery, guaranteeing the bottom team no worse than fourth overall, reduced to two selections in 2021. It led to today’s format and a stipulation since 2022 that no team can win the lottery twice in a five-year span.

For a while, the league conducted the lottery in the CBC’s Toronto headquarters behind closed doors with only Bettman, an accounting firm and eligible GMs present before results were announced on TV.

In the interests of transparency, it’s all done live now.

lhornby@postmedia.com

X: @sunhornby

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