The Most Intense Five Minutes in Hockey: Inside the NHL Draft Lottery Room

SECAUCUS, N.J. — Clank. Clank. Clank. One by one, under the watchful count of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, the 14 ping-pong balls carrying the combination to a generational prodigy were loaded into the lottery machine.

Approximately 90 minutes before the hockey world learned Connor Bedard’s landing spot, the actual NHL Draft Lottery was conducted in a small conference room inside the NHL Network’s studios in the shadow of Manhattan.

Daily Faceoff was one of three media outlets granted access to the proceedings, sequestered inside the draw room with no ability to communicate until after the on-air reveal. Cell phones and smart watches were collected to preserve the made-for-TV moment.

A production miscue caused presenter Kevin Weekes to say aloud that the Columbus Blue Jackets fell to No. 3 before deputy commissioner Bill Daly could flip the card, leading to tinfoil hat social media speculation that the process was cooked to send Bedard to Chicago, the third-largest U.S. market. That mistake may have spoiled the moment in Columbus, but the lottery balls were drawn more than an hour prior to the gaffe.

And in truth, the presentation is where the NHL gets itself into unnecessary trouble with the Draft Lottery.

Because with all due respect to 3-on-3 overtime, the lottery machine draws produced the five most exhilarating minutes of the season for 11 teams praying for franchise-altering talent.

That’s it. From the moment the balls began bouncing at 6:58 until just after 7:02, two separate draws were completed to decide the No. 1 and No. 2 overall picks in the 2023 Draft.

As we can bear witness, the process itself doesn’t get any more legitimate. It is executed with the surgical precision that would remind you of Britain’s coronation, fit to crown hockey’s new prince.

The entire process is taped for posterity, beginning with Bettman holding up copies of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Bergen (N.J.) Record to prove that yes, it was in fact, May 8, 2023. He read a 10-minute monologue to explain the ground rules and introduced everyone in the room, including the two team representatives who joined to watch, Alex Meruelo Jr. from the Arizona Coyotes and Tom Minton from the Philadelphia Flyers.

Then the drama began to unfold in a room silent save for the whirr of the machine.

After snipping the red seal attached a black, hard-plastic case containing the numbered ping-pong balls, Martin Gorbachik of Smartplay International – the same company who conducts the NBA’s Draft Lottery – loaded the balls in numerical sequence. On Bettman’s command, they dropped into the bowl and began bouncing.

At exactly 6:58 p.m., Bettman called for the balls to be drawn in 20-second intervals.

“DRAW!” said NHL vice-president of events Thomas Meaney.

The first ball, 5, sucked to the top. Meaney called for the draw of the second ball, but it didn’t happen instantaneously as Gorbachik pressed the red button – causing Bettman to gesticulate in the air, signaling for the ball to be pulled. It’s the nature of the beast; Bedard’s fate was not the only one subject to the whims of gravity. The second ball, 13, soon followed. And then the third ball in the sequence, 4, arrived some 20 seconds after that.

Around the room, NHL staffers and the league’s audit partner, Scott Clarke of Ernst & Young, began flipping through pages in the moment to understand the various permutations.

Last week, the NHL distributed a spreadsheet with 1,001 different possible four-number combinations, each assigned to a corresponding team. With the best odds (18.5 percent) in the Draft Lottery, that meant the Anaheim Ducks were assigned 185 different possible combinations of the 1,001. Everyone outside of Bettman and Gorbachik, the lottery operator, were frantically trying to find the winning possible sequence on the page.

The intensity of those final 20 seconds is matched only in the waning moments of a Game 7. The air in the room could be cut with a knife, the literal future of a franchise floating among us.

There were 11 balls left in the tank, but the reality of the math meant there were only seven possible destinations for Bedard.

After the first three balls were drawn (5-4-13), four lottery teams were eliminated from contention: Bedard’s hometown Vancouver Canucks, last year’s lottery winner the Montreal Canadiens, plus the Detroit Red Wings and Flyers.

The Nashville Predators held one of the final combinations, but if the final ball drawn was 7, then the Preds would have moved up to No. 5 – and Bedard would’ve gone to Anaheim.

That meant in real time, the Ducks held three of the 11 possible combinations (27 percent) on the final ball. The Blackhawks and San Jose Sharks each held two, leaving one possible ball each (1-of-11) for Arizona, Columbus, St. Louis and Washington.

Could you imagine if the NHL had the lottery machine in studio and paused after that third ball to show the new odds and get reaction?

But before it all could even be calculated, Meaney shouted “DRAW!”

And the No. 9 ball delivered No. 98 to the Windy City. The winning combination: 5-13-4-9.

The same balls were dumped back into the vat to draw for No. 2 overall, awarded to the Anaheim Ducks – removing any potential possibility that the balls might have been weighted. Bettman signaled the end to the event and reminded everyone sequestered their agreement to remain out of communication.

Somewhere around 7:20 pm ET some thousand miles away in Chicago, Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson wrote the names Emmy and Willa on his hand in pen for good luck charms. Willa is his four-month-old daughter, and Emmy was the name him and his wife picked for the daughter they never got to meet, lost in pregnancy in 2021. Davidson didn’t need any help from Emmy and Willa – the Lottery had already concluded by that point.

But not even Daly, who flipped the cards, knew the result ahead of time. He wasn’t in the room. By the end of the night, the Blackhawks had sold more than $2.5 million in new season-ticket sales with the Bedard news. The torched will be passed from Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane to the British Columbia kid.

The NHL has made numerous tweaks to the Draft Lottery process in the last few years, adding new rules and wrinkles. Maybe there is one more in short order. All they have to do is wheel the lottery machine into the studio, the drama is already delicious.

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The Most Intense Five Minutes in Hockey: Inside the NHL Draft Lottery Room

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