The assistant director of media relations for the NHL was on the Penguins' pregame last evening and gave a rundown of the mechanics of the draft lottery. He explained the lottery this way:
A lottery machine similar to those you see in your state lottery drawing is used. 14 balls (numbered 1 to 14) are placed in the machine. At a precisely determined interval, four of the balls are drawn.
Four balls are used because the possible combination of number sequences using four balls drawn from numbers 1-14 is 1001. Prior to the drawing of the winning number sequence, 1000 of the possible number sequences are randomly assigned by a computer to the teams that did not qualify for the playoffs and the one remaining number sequence is randomly discarded. The number of numerical sequences assigned corresponds to the percentage the team has of winning the lottery.
On April 6, the day of the lottery drawing, the sequence of the numbers drawn determines the lottery winner. For example, if 13-1-5-3 was drawn, the team that was assigned that precise number sequence would be the lottery winner.
Any team not in the playoffs can win the lottery but only the "bottom 5" teams can advance into the top slot. The rest of the teams would move up four slots if they won, bumping the four teams ahead of them back one, and the rest of the draft order would remain the same.