Aside from the eventual call ups of Lias Andersson and Filip Chytil, there isn’t much for us as Ranger fans to look forward to for the rest of the season. With that in mind, the next important date –other than the date the Rangers make a coaching change– is the NHL Draft Lottery.

The NHL has very strict anti-tanking restrictions, and the team that finishes last overall only has a 20% chance of getting the first pick, and just a 50/50 chance of staying in the top three picks. At 21st in the league, the Rangers currently have a 4.5% chance of nabbing the top overall pick, ant a 14.4% chance of picking in the top three.

I guess the post could end here, but I did some draft lottery simming too.

Thanks to the good folks at Tankathon, I was able to do a bunch of draft lottery simulations. As expected, some combination of Arizona, Buffalo, and Vancouver had the top overall pick. And for the most part, those three comprised the top three overall picks as well.

Something of note: The Islanders have two picks in the lottery, theirs and Calgary’s. They actually have an 8.7% chance of grabbing the top overall pick and a 26% chance of picking in the top three. Go ahead and vomit if you want.

As for the Blueshirts, it took my only one draft simulation to get the Rangers into the top three (#3 overall). Carolina had the second overall pick in this simulation. And you guessed it, the Isles won the lottery. Ain’t that a punch to the stomach?

It took me until the 10th time to get the Blueshirts to the #2 overall pick. In those other simulations, the Blueshirts dropped to #12 in one and #11 in another, but remained at #10 for the other six simulations.

It was another 11 times to get back to the #2 overall pick. The Rangers dropped to 12 twice, 11 three times, and stayed at 10 the rest of the times. So we are getting there. Another six times to get back to #3 overall. Hooray.

It was another 18 tries before I finally got the Rangers to the #1 overall pick. So in total, I clicked simulate 47 times before the Rangers nabbed the #1 overall pick. In that span, they picked at #2 once and #3 twice.

Of course this isn’t an exact science, but the point of the exercise is to note that the Rangers likely won’t be picking #1 overall, and likely won’t be in the top three. They can also drop two spots if the ping pong balls don’t fall their way. I’d expect the Rangers to finish in the 9-11 range when all is said and done.

Share: 

More About: