2020 NHL Draft Lottery officially set for June 26

The 2020 NHL Draft Lottery will be held in late June before the season resumes play.

Things are starting to kick into high gear for the NHL, which has been on hiatus since mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic. In late May, the league unveiled details of the sport’s return to play initiative, which will kick off with a training camp starting on July 10 before a hopeful season restart later in the month.

Before that, however, comes the 2020 NHL Draft Lottery in one of the league’s more complex maneuvers. While the 2020 NHL Draft won’t be held until later this year — likely after the Stanley Cup is awarded for this season — the draft lottery will happen before the season resumes in a slight twist from how things are usually done in hockey.

In normal seasons, the draft lottery takes place after the regular season has ended, but before the playoffs, with the 15 teams that don’t make the postseason making up the lottery teams. However, due to the pandemic, the league will be holding the draft lottery in late June before the season picks up again.

2020 NHL Draft Lottery will be held on Friday, June 26

This year, the 2020 NHL Draft Lottery will be broadcast on Friday, June 26 at 8 p.m. ET, according to TSN’s Bob McKenzie. Though no television broadcast has been set yet, it’s more than fair to assume the league will televise the event as it has in the past.

The 2020 NHL Draft Lottery will look a bit different this year than in past years. For starters, there could be two draft lotteries, depending on how things shake out this time. While the lottery odds remain the same, with the Detroit Red Wings having the highest odds at 18.5 percent, outside of the top seven teams that didn’t make the league’s 24-team playoffs, there are eight mystery teams that have yet to be determined.

If the June 26 lottery draws one of those mystery teams for one of the top three spots, we will get a second lottery after the play-in round is complete from the eight teams that were knocked out of the qualifiers to determine which team is awarded the pick.

It’s a complex system — maybe too complex — but the lottery on June 26 will bring us some answers at the very least.

There is a situation where a team like the Pittsburgh Penguins may end up losing the best-of-three play-in round, then turn around and win the first overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft Lottery. While the chances of that are quite slim, this is the NHL we are talking about here so expect the unexpected.

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