The Pittsburgh Penguins have a bit of a reputation league-wide as benefiting from the NHL Draft Lottery, or utilizing it to launch their team as the NHL’s best since the lockout. In truth, that’s not really the case — aside from a very big caveat in 2005.
The NHL announced a draft lottery in 1995, with many different incarnations and morphing odds for how teams could jump to the top spot. The basic function or theory of a draft lottery is to discourage out and out “tanking” or trying not to form a competitive team, since finishing in last place in the league doesn’t automatically guarantee the first overall pick.