The Buffalo Sabres will find out tonight if they’ll be drafting first in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft to likely pick generational defenseman Rasmus Dahlin, or watching as another club wins the lottery yet again. The absolute worst case scenario for the Sabres would be to miss out on all three spots and drop to fourth, with the option to still draft a difference-making talent there as well.
In a slightly different mathematical format to last year, the NHL has gone to a progressive probability system whereby the odds for teams not selected successively increase for the second and third picks.