Red Wings, with best odds to get No. 1 pick in NHL Draft, fall to No. 4

The Detroit Red Wings had the best chance to win the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NHL Draft but fell to No. 4 in the NHL Draft Lottery on Friday.

"To be honest with you, not surprised," Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman said. "We had an 18.5 percent chance of winning the first pick. So realistically, I'm prepared to be sitting here today not talking about the first pick. I'm not really surprised. The bottom eight, or the eight playoff teams, had a 24.5 percent chance combined of getting the pick. So the odds were better that the first pick went to the bottom eight than it did us."

The No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft will be given to one of the eight eliminated from the Stanley Cup Qualifiers and will be determined by a second drawing to be held before the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, which do not have a start date. The draft was scheduled for June 26-27 in Montreal but was postponed due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus.

Each of the eliminated teams will have a 12.5 percent chance of winning the No. 1 pick.

The 16 teams that will play a best-of-5 series in the Stanley Cup Qualifiers are the Arizona Coyotes, Calgary Flames, Carolina Hurricanes, Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Edmonton Oilers, Florida Panthers, Minnesota Wild, Montreal Canadiens, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Nashville Predators, Pittsburgh Penguins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Vancouver Canucks and Winnipeg Jets.

The Los Angeles Kings, with a 9.5 percent chance at the No. 1 pick, moved up and will get the No. 2 pick, and the Ottawa Senators, who had a combined 25 percent chance at the top pick, will select No. 3 and No. 5.

The First Phase of the lottery included the seven teams that are not part of the 24-team NHL Return to Play Plan, plus the eight placeholder positions for the eliminated qualifiers. A separate drawing was held for each of the top three picks.

The winning placeholder, designated Team E, had a 2.5 percent chance to be assigned the No. 1 pick, the 12th-best odds among the 15 entries.

The Red Wings (17-49-5, .275 points percentage) finished last in the NHL this season. The last time they had the No. 4 pick was in the 1983 NHL Draft, when they selected Yzerman. He scored 1,755 points (692 goals, 1,063 assists) in 1,514 NHL games in 22 seasons with the Red Wings, won the Stanley Cup in 1997, 1998 and 2002, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2009.

"It was a long time ago, it doesn't resonate with me anymore," said Yzerman, who was hired as Detroit GM on April 19, 2019. "I was picked fourth overall. I had no idea going into the draft what my NHL career was going to be like, I had no expectations for myself, and things worked out."

The No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft will likely be forward Alexis Lafreniere, the two-time CHL player of the year. Players who may be available at No. 4 include forward Tim Stuetzle, forward Quinton Byfield, defenseman Jamie Drysdale and defenseman Jake Sanderson.

"Whether we're picking first or fourth, we feel we're going to get a very good prospect," Yzerman said. "So knowing we have the fourth pick, there are going to be great options for us and we'll be excited about the prospect that we get, and he'll have tremendous potential to be a good NHL player."

In 2019, the Red Wings fell to No. 6 in the lottery despite having a 28.8 percent chance of winning a top-three pick after finishing 14th in the East. They also fell to No. 6 in 2018, when they finished 13th in the East.

"We can sit here today and feel sorry for ourselves. The system is what it is. It's the same for all the teams," Yzerman said. "We're going to get a great prospect, we'll do everything we can to develop him, and, you know what, and maybe we'll get lucky again. [The Colorado Avalanche] lost the lottery [in 2017], ended up at the No. 4 spot and got [defenseman] Cale Makar, who's a player who definitely moves the needle. Time will tell. But we're excited about the prospect, we'll get our lucky breaks along the way, and maybe this will be one of them."

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