The NHL tried something new with how this year's draft worked. It got awkward

For decades, the NHL had a unique approach to their annual draft. While other leagues used a decentralized approach, with teams drafting from various war rooms around North America, the NHL brought everyone to one host city for a days-long celebration of the future. Aside from 2020 and 2021, when COVID forced a fully virtual draft, it’s been an everyone-invited event for decades. It was a rare case of hockey doing something cool and unique.

And so of course, this year, they said: Nah, let’s just do it the way everyone else does.

Back in 2023, we reported on the reasons behind the potential change, but we’ll summarize here: It was expensive for teams to fly their entire front office and…