NHL teams vote in favor of decentralized 2026 NHL Draft: Source
Prior to 2025, the NHL had a long history of doing its draft differently. Unlike other major leagues, which keep their front offices in home-based war rooms for the draft, the NHL used a centralized format, with all the team's decision makers on an arena floor.
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Aside from the pandemic-affected 2020 and 2021 drafts, the 2025 NHL Draft was the first year the league went to a decentralized model. The last in-person draft was in 2024 at Sphere in Las Vegas.
That old environment created great TV for fans and an easy way to create discourse for teams, but decision makers didn't love the format. They felt they lacked the necessary privacy for internal discourse on major team decisions. Management also expressed frustration with the calendar proximity to free agency, and ownership liked the appeal of cost savings.
The league was criticized this summer for how the first round of the NHL Draft went, as it dragged on with several awkward moments led by the 'NHL Draft House' virtual interviews between the prospects and their new managers. That said, ratings were quite strong, and to the league's credit, the second day of the draft flowed very well, and much better than the COVID-era remote drafts. The league could learn from what didn't work to put on a better day one experience in 2026.
While the average fan won't care about this detail, keeping the draft decentralized makes the NHL the only league without a marquee convention-like event. The MLB has the Winter Meetings, the NFL has the draft combine, and NBA has its summer league.
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