Did you skip Phase I of this year’s NHL Lottery Drawing last night on NBCSN? That’s understandable. Going into the event, it seemed the Islanders would most likely not be involved anyway. There’s also almost no reason to watch NBCSN unless hockey or the Olympics are on, so you may have forgotten it even existed on your cable package.
But in a twist that was both surprising and also the most NHL thing that possibly could happen, a “placeholder team” won the right to draft first overall, disappointing a slew of truly awful teams and giving one team destined for a play-in series an unexpected chance at landing the first overall pick in the next draft (whenever that happens).