Canucks, Red Wings one number off winning NHL Draft Lottery

The New Jersey Devils won the NHL Draft Lottery and the Flyers and Stars moved up to round out the top three.

One number. That’s it.

The Vancouver Canucks and Detroit Red Wings were both only one number away from winning Saturday’s 2017 NHL Draft Lottery.

Instead, the Canucks finished with the fifth overall pick, a drop of three spots from their original seeding. The Red Wings will pick ninth, a two-spot drop.

For those not familiar with how the lottery works, each team is assigned a certain amount of random four-number combinations. The lottery machine spits out four numbers that are then matched with the random combinations to determine which team picks first overall. The same process is then repeated to determine who picks second and third.

The winning combination for the New Jersey Devils proved to be 1, 5, 6, 12. The Canucks and Red Wings had the first three, but that wasn’t enough to win.

In fact, the Red Wings were also one number off of getting the second overall pick.

Maybe they should consider trading for Taylor Hall.

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