Here is the thing, if the Sens didn't own the Sharks pick, they would have dropped all the way from 2nd to 5th. This draft system f***s over the truly bad teams.
I just cannot get over that and is one of the reasons why i am not that happy about what transpired.
Me too there's stuff I don't really like about the lottery system but that reasonning isn't entirely true
San Jose : 3rd worst = 3rd OA pick
LA : 4th worst = 2nd OA pick
It is designated to not reward the worst teams unless they get lucky
The only "outlier" this year is a bubble team (or playoffs team, which would be even worse) getting 1st OA, it's a bit crazy but it's basically the same odds as every other year, just that this year is optically very different
But I don't know, IMO the lottery should be more something like this :
1st OA pick : lottery between the 5 worst teams (minus teams who already won)
2nd OA pick : lottery between the 10 worst teams (minus the team that already won the 3rd OA if it was a bot-10 team)
3rd OA pick : lottery between the 15 teams missing the playoffs
The rest of the order determined by the standings