NHL could offer Red Wings Alexis Lafreniere on silver platter!

Desperate times call for desperate measures and for the past weeks, it seems to be the case when we are talking about the current NHL shutdown and the upcoming draft that was supposed to take place at the end of June in Montreal, Canada. 

The NHL is now seriously considering a desperate plan to hold the annual draft, even if this season and the playoffs are not completed yet. Several teams’ general managers are believed to be terrible upset against the idea of seeing a team able to win the draft lottery in June and then carve out a place in the playoffs in August and potentially win the Stanley Cup. That might have been what prompted the NHL to come up with the idea of making changes to the draft lottery.

Per Travis Yost of TSN, one potential revision to the lottery rules stands out: the league would pick just one winner, drawing for the top spot only, with those odds likely determined by regular season points percentage.
Couple that single draw with a couple of important conditions:
1. A team can only move up by a maximum of four spots; and
2. Because only one ball is drawn, a team can only theoretically slide by one spot

This change will give the Detroit Red Wings a huge advantage! This is what the Wings' odds with the regular lottery looked like:

Suddenly, there are no longer 15 teams that have a chance of winning the first total choice in the lottery draw, but just five clubs. 

Consequently, the percentage of chances of the Wings to get their hands on Alexis Lafrenière in the next draft would spike from 19% to 57%. That means they had a four-in-five chance of not landing Lafreniere, and a two-in-three chance of not landing either Lafreniere or Quinton Byfield.

We will find out very soon how lucky the Red Wings can be!