A placeholder team has won the 2020 NHL Draft Lottery, and the chance to select first overall at the 2020 NHL Draft.
Whichever team does wind up filling that placeholder spot will have the opportunity to draft QMJHL standout Alexis Lafreniere, widely believed to be the favourite to go first off the board on draft day.
The placeholder teams included in the lottery will be decided by the play-in series when the NHL is eventually permitted to return to play.
The 18-year-old Rimouski Oceanic winger is coming off his second straight 100-point campaign, having posted 35 goals and 112 points in just 52 games in 2019-20. In doing so, he became just the second player to ever claim back-to-back CHL Player of the Year honours — the only other being fellow Oceanic alum Sidney Crosby.
Behind him, Adler Mannheim’s Tim Stutzle and OHL Sudbury’s Quinton Byfield are the projected next best of the 2020 draft class. Read the full breakdown of the top prospects in the 2020 draft class from Sportsnet’s Sam Cosentino here.
The 2020 NHL Draft Lottery was a novel affair compared to past events, impacted significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year’s iteration of the lottery featured a mix of the bottom-ranked teams from the regular season along with ‘placeholder teams’ representing those who get eliminated from the best-of-five play-in series if or when the league is able to return to play.
More to come.
