I thought that this would be fun to tabulate.
The Canucks entered the league, as we all know, with the Sabres in 1970. Our odds at #1 overall were split, 50/50, with Buffalo. We lost. Our odds of winning the lottery can be expressed thusly:
| Expected Wins | Actual Wins |
| 0.5 | 0 |
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Beginning with the 1971 draft and up to the 1995 draft, the order was determined solely by the order of the regular season standings. The Canucks never finished in dead last and, thus, never had a shot at the #1 pick.
Beginning with the 1995 entry draft, the NHL held a lottery to determine the #1 overall pick. This lottery only included teams who had missed the playoffs, which excluded Vancouver, who had lost to Chicago in the second round of the preceding post-season (f*** Chris Chelios.) The Canucks would also make the playoffs one final time the following season, losing to Colorado in the first round.
Therefore, the first lottery participated in by Vancouver was 1997, following a season when the Canucks missed the playoffs by 4 points. Vancouver had the highest amount of points out of the non-playoff teams and thus held the worst odds.
The lottery format remained the same until 2012. I am not able to find the exact odds assigned to teams in those early years, but the odds from 2010-2012 are well-documented and we can assume they were similar for the years previous, although we need to re-distribute to account for the fact that fewer teams were participating in some years, to come up with the following table for the Canucks for the four consecutive years they missed the playoffs:
| Year | Draft Spot | 2012 Lottery% | # of Teams | Est. Lottery% |
| 1997 | 10 | 2.1 | 10 | 2.19 |
| 1998 | 3 | 14.2 | 10 | 14.78 |
| 1999 | 2 | 18.8 | 11 | 19.26 |
| 2000 | 11 | 1.5 | 12 | 1.52 |
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The Canucks made the playoffs in 2001 (Avs again) and every following season until the lockout canceled the 2004-05 season. For the 2005 draft, the NHL came up with a convoluted method for determining the draft order, which gave all 30 teams the chance at #1 overall (Sidney Crosby, of course.)
For the 2005 draft, four teams were given 3 "balls" to be drawn, and another ten teams were given 2. That left one ball each for the remaining 16 teams (including Vancouver, of course,) and 48 balls in total. The Canucks therefore had a 1 in 48 chance of winning the 2005 lottery, or 2.08%
From 2006-2013 the Canucks would miss the playoffs twice, in 2006 and 2008, and have odds of 0.5% and 1.1% in those two seasons, respectively.
The 2014 draft was a weird one because New Jersey was deemed ineligible to participate as a punishment from the league for the contract given to Ilya Kovalchuk. In the 1.5% chance of New Jersey winning, a re-draw would occur, which means that each team had a slightly higher chance of winning. To determine the Canucks odds, you therefore must sum the 6.2% chance of winning the first draw, with the 6.2% chance of winning the second draw in the 1.5% chance that it occurs. I don't have enough information to calculate this perfectly (since I presume the combination assigned to NJ would not be "put back" for the re-draw) but this gets us close enough:
6.2% + (6.2% * 1.5%) = 6.29%
Close enough!
The Canucks would make the playoffs the following season and not participate again until 2016, by which time the NHL had changed things rather dramatically. Now, the top 3 teams would all be selected by lottery, and since there are now three lotteries, we need to think about our process.
I have decided that from this point on, I am going to simply divide the winning pick by the lottery spot. Thus, winning the #1 overall pick counts as winning the lottery, getting #2 counts for 0.5 and #3 overall counts as 0.33. This is sort of lazy and simple but I think it's good enough. A team that wins #2 overall twice is pretty lucky and arguably as lucky as a team that wins #1 overall once. Looking at it this way, there are now 1.83 lotteries up for grabs each season.
The Canucks had the 3rd worst record for the 2016 draft and had these odds for the 3 lotteries:
Odds of #1 = 11.5%
Odds of #2 = 11.4%
Odds of #3 = 11.3%
Another way to look at this is they had an 11.5% chance at winning a lottery, 11.4% at 0.5 of a lottery, and 11.3% chance at 0.333 of a lottery, or:
(11.5 * 1) + (11.4 * 0.5) + (11.3 * 0.333) = 20.9%
We do the same thing for 2017 and 2018 to get 21.77 and 13.87, respectively.
Putting it all together, the Canucks have had the following historical odds:
| Expected Wins | Cumulative Expected Wins | Actual Wins | Net Luck |
| 1970 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1971 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1972 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1973 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1974 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1975 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1976 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1977 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1978 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1979 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1980 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1981 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1982 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1983 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1984 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1985 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1986 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1987 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1988 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1989 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1990 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1991 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1992 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1993 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1994 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1995 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1996 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | -0.50 |
| 1997 | 0.02 | 0.52 | 0.00 | -0.52 |
| 1998 | 0.15 | 0.67 | 0.00 | -0.67 |
| 1999 | 0.19 | 0.86 | 0.00 | -0.86 |
| 2000 | 0.02 | 0.88 | 0.00 | -0.88 |
| 2001 | 0.00 | 0.88 | 0.00 | -0.88 |
| 2002 | 0.00 | 0.88 | 0.00 | -0.88 |
| 2003 | 0.00 | 0.88 | 0.00 | -0.88 |
| 2004 | 0.00 | 0.88 | 0.00 | -0.88 |
| 2005 | 0.02 | 0.90 | 0.00 | -0.90 |
| 2006 | 0.05 | 0.95 | 0.00 | -0.95 |
| 2007 | 0.00 | 0.95 | 0.00 | -0.95 |
| 2008 | 0.01 | 0.96 | 0.00 | -0.96 |
| 2009 | 0.00 | 0.96 | 0.00 | -0.96 |
| 2010 | 0.00 | 0.96 | 0.00 | -0.96 |
| 2011 | 0.00 | 0.96 | 0.00 | -0.96 |
| 2012 | 0.00 | 0.96 | 0.00 | -0.96 |
| 2013 | 0.00 | 0.96 | 0.00 | -0.96 |
| 2014 | 0.06 | 1.02 | 0.00 | -1.02 |
| 2015 | 0.00 | 1.02 | 0.00 | -1.02 |
| 2016 | 0.21 | 1.23 | 0.00 | -1.23 |
| 2017 | 0.22 | 1.45 | 0.00 | -1.45 |
| 2018 | 0.14 | 1.59 | 0.00 | -1.59 |
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As of today, the Canucks have won 1.59 fewer lotteries than we could have expected, confirming that they are, in fact, due.
I hope this information helps.
