Last night, the 2023 NHL Entry Draft Lottery took place. A typically low profile event had a big exception this year as Connor Bedard, the prospect set to go first overall, is poised to be a generational talent in similar realms of Sidney Crosby and Conor McDavid. Surely the league couldn’t find a way to mess up what is supposed to be a literal lottery right? Wrong. Not only were there several red flags that indicated something sketchy was going on but sure enough, the team who deserves Connor Bedard the least, magically surpassed Anaheim and Columbus (who both had significantly better odds) and landed the first overall selection. That being said, let’s talk about what actually happened last night and why Connor Bedard going to Chicago is a complete embarrassment to the National Hockey League.
There’s speculation every year that the NHL Draft Lottery is rigged, but this year gave way too many indications that may actually prove it to be true. The largest red flag with how the lottery goes down is the camera never actually shows the lottery happening. According to an ESPN article, the draft lottery is done using fourteen different sets of ping pong balls, allowing for 1,001 combinations. Whatever percentage odds a team has in the lottery determines how many balls will be assigned to them. Therefore the Ducks, who had the best chances at 18.5% were assigned 185 ping pong balls. My question is, what do they do with the balls after the lottery? Genuinely surprised Fanatics isn’t selling them on shop.nhl.com for $8.99 a ball but I digress. Apparently “an accounting firm” runs the whole process for the NHL and to make it an even 1,000, they “delete” one of the combinations. Wonder which team won that lottery.
So now that we know how the draft lottery works, surely it makes sense right? Well if it was so simple, why wouldn’t the broadcast show the lottery actually happening? However, not seeing it wasn’t even the sketchiest part. Before going to a commercial break prior to the top three picks being announced, it was said on the broadcast that Columbus had dropped down to third, but they never flipped the card to show that? Low and behold, we come back from commercials and they flip the card to show the camera that the Columbus Blue Jackets would be selecting third in the upcoming draft. How would they know that or better yet, why would they say it before it actually happened? So now it’s between Anaheim and Chicago for who will win the Connor Bedard sweepstakes. Anaheim had significantly higher odds than Chicago yet for the second time in their history, they’ll miss out on drafting a generational icon as the Chicago Blackhawks magically won the draft lottery.
Before we get into why that’s an embarrassment it’s also worth mentioning that this mysterious accounting firm that apparently organizes the whole lottery is Ernst & Young. Who are they? Until this morning, I had no idea but a quick google search will inform you that they’re not even a full calendar year out from “cheating by its audit professionals on exams required to obtain and maintain Certified Public Accountant (CPA) licenses. The Security & Exchanges Commissions charged them $100 million in penalties for that and it doesn’t end there. In 2020, there was another massive scandal involving a business called Wirecard that EY served as their auditor where almost two billion euros were missing which led them to declaring bankruptcy and eventually admitting the money never existed. Does any of this really have anything to do with the draft lottery? I don’t know, maybe. Although when the results of it are as questionable as they were after last night, it’s worth looking into.
Connor Bedard will now become a member of the Chicago Blackhawks this summer as a result of the draft lottery. Barely even two years after it came to the surface that the Chicago Blackhawks swept a sexual assault case under the rug during their 2010 Stanley Cup run. How did the league decide to “penalize” them for that? A $2 Million fine, the Head Coach at the time “resigning” from coaching, eventually being banned from the league, and several other executives losing their jobs. Half of those “penalties” aren’t even that, they’re just the rightful effects to come as a result of the entire situation. Should the Blackhawks even have been allowed to have this draft pick? For context, situations where teams have been stripped of a draft pick in the past include the following: Arizona lost two draft picks in 2020 for violating NHL Combine testing policies. In 2009, the Maple Leafs were fined and stripped of a pick for wrongfully handling the signing of a player in the Swedish Elite League. Yet the Blackhawks, who literally buried a sexual assault case for over a decade, got a $2 Million slap on the wrist and a free generational icon. Pathetic.
Now I suppose if the Blackhawks were to lose a draft pick as penalty for everything included in the lawsuit against them, it would have happened last draft. However, at the end of the day, the Chicago Blackhawks not only employed a video coach who would sexually assault multiple people, but would do absolutely nothing in regards to righting that wrong until they were forced to do so in the public eye. The fact that two years later, this same franchise is now being gifted a generational talent is a complete failure and utter embarrassment for the NHL. I know it’s “a lottery” but there are enough red flags to question whether that’s really the case, especially when the options came down to an original six big market team or one of two smaller market teams.
At the very least, the Blackhawks should have been exempt from landing in the top three, maybe even the top five or ten of the draft lottery. Which really isn’t that big of a penalty when you consider the fact that teams were stripped of draft picks altogether for a lot less of an offense. The Blackhawks were barely penalized for everything that happened involving that 2010 team and now they’ve won the Bedard sweepstakes. I’m almost certain the organization as well as the league as a whole, is now going to use that as a distraction so people will completely forget about Kyle Beach and everything bad that happened with the Chicago Blackhawks and how they handled everything since 2010. I’m not sitting here saying this organization needs to be permanently punished or nixed from the league, but to watch them be gifted a player of Connor Bedard’s stature, not even two full years after the lawsuit was settled, is just an awful look for the National Hockey League.
Chris Feldman
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