16-07-2025
What the NHL gets wrong in sticking with a decentralized draft format
'If it ain't broke, don't fix it,' might be the only cliche that we apparently don't subscribe to in hockey.
For a long time, the NHL ran a centralized draft that worked. Then they tried a decentralized one, and it didn't. Naturally, they're going to try to fix the broken one.
I know why they want to. I was stuck in that Nashville airport in 2023 when the storm clouds rolled in, and the delays and cancellations piled up, and the gathering executives, scouts, agents, players, team personnel and media, desperate to get home for July 1, had to do their business from the gates, some sitting on the ground and others calling it quits and finding available hotel rooms. I understand why they hate the logistics of it. I understand the size limitations of those draft floor tables and the growing number of people who are involved but left out of the big day (though for many of those who were included at those tables, that big day was also a special one they may now never get to have again). I understand why they prefer the privacy of a conference room to openly discuss their next pick or make their next move over the earshot close quarters of the floor. I know it's cheaper for owners and the league to do it this way, and that there was some sticker shock at the cost of the draft at Sphere in Vegas last year (though the decision to decentralize had already been made before that).
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There was some good in what took place in Los Angeles at the Peacock Theater last month. I thought the lighting and staging were striking and popped. I thought the commissioner asking all of the players in attendance to stand and soak it in was a nice way of giving them their moment, and it was followed by an early emotional high with Matthew Schaefer and some really nice touches — the breast cancer ribbon on the Islanders jersey, the way they let him catch his breath. There's nothing fans hate more than the wants and complaints of the media, but in the interest of highlighting the positives, the media setup in the mezzanine level was the best its been at any draft I've covered from a logistics standpoint and the wifi, which famously never works at these things, was borderline fast (!) — in large part because there were so few media in attendance, I'm sure.
For a moment, I thought to myself, 'This is actually going well.'
But then it didn't, and it didn't for hours longer than it should have, so that the missteps festered and it grew harder and harder to watch.
The Draft House was a predictable debacle, slowing down the production by requiring almost every player on Day 1 to step into its box of choppy connections, delayed feedback, mic echoes, awkward silence and even cuts. Some of the managers could be seen chuckling or frustrated during the issues. In a particularly uncomfortable moment, James Hagens, the American star of the night, was asked to wave at a broken screen. Patching into 32 different rooms, with 32 different lines of communication and camera equipment, was always going to produce the problems that it did, too, and the league should have known that.
After giving the players their moment off the top of the show and lining them all up at the seats nearest the exit of their rows, they all felt they had to go down the line and shake hands with each other after Schaefer did — and who could blame him, a teenager in the haze and adrenaline of it all. On the stage, their moment felt hollow. Several of the top prospects stayed home once they knew their moment wasn't going to be the traditional one, arm-in-arm with their new team on the stage for that draft day photo. Some agents even advised their players to, predicting they'd enjoy it more.
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The buzz outside in the square at L.A. Live, a place invented to manufacture it for these types of things, felt nothing like it usually does in the host city at the draft. It was so good, so successful, in Vancouver, Montreal and Nashville so recently, too — those cities coming alive with hockey people, their bars and restaurants slammed with them, fans wandering through their local spots and stumbling upon their childhood heroes, everyone at ease and willing to share a beer, a conversation or a photo. Even in Vegas, where it's hard for anything to break through in the circus and was always going to be impossible for the NHL to take over the host city like it usually, the big night at Sphere — an incredible, if expensive, success that the NHL did first — was the talk of the town for a moment.
Whenever the NHL has tried to copy and paste the events of the other major leagues, it has often felt Mickey Mouse. Our sport's All-Star weekend and awards show have never captured the imagination of fans like the home run derby or the dunk contest. A to-a-fault commitment to including a player from every team in the festivities has taken the prestige and honor out of being selected, too. In the NBA, it's at the top of a player's Hall of Fame credentials, and the picks are hotly debated on network TV for weeks. In the NHL, it has turned into a footnote. For a time, Zdeno Chara and Shea Weber gave the hardest shot competition some juice, but then it got squeezed out.
But the NHL Draft was always different. It was uniquely hockey's, the one place where fans got to see a notoriously private group of executives (Lou Lamoriello and Steve Yzerman come to mind) do their business with no curtain — and see how the sausage is made. Outdoor games were novel for a time, too. Cool, even. A definite success, where credit is due. But the novelty has worn off there over time as well.
The novelty of the NHL's centralized draft hadn't, though, except maybe for a couple of dozen executives and their penny-pinching owners (owners who we don't hear have plans to decentralize their annual Board of Governors meetings in sunny Boca Raton, Fla., or Pebble Beach, Calif.).
For everything the league gains by saving a few bucks and giving its general managers a little more comfort to do their business, it loses in the intangible — everything that's gained by getting its league together once a year, from relationships built, business partners engaged with, media from all 32 markets instead of a select few and the interest that they drive and stories that they tell, one of its markets energized (and financially stimulated), the list goes on.
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There are believers, like my colleague Thomas Drance at The Athletic, who think the decentralized draft can work with the right tweaks. I think it's closer to make-believe to count on the NHL to hit all of the right notes. In the real world, I'd bet the league proves Drancer wrong.
Presumably, the Draft House is done and dusted. Get the players up there for a photo with Gary Bettman, get them off for a quick interview with a knowledgeable broadcaster, and move it along at a clip that doesn't result in even die-hard fans falling asleep late at night on their couch. That should be the obvious starting point for next year. Some have suggested announcing picks from landmarks — the Rangers from the Empire State Building, the Ducks from Disney (Roger McQueen's helicopter ride into Disneyland this year was well-executed), the Maple Leafs from the CN Tower, etc. That could work. It's definitely preferable to bringing out C-list celebrities to give fans 10 'I forgot about him/her' thoughts for every 'That's very cool' Celine Dion or Adam Sandler cameo (those were good!).
To just assume that it can work, or at least that it will ever not feel like it's beneath the tall shadows of its NFL and NBA equivalents, puts a lot of trust in a league that I don't think has earned it with these things. They could have done all those things people want to see them do next year in the first go-around. It should have run under three hours. Duh. They didn't execute that. It should have run faster than it did in the unbearably long COVID-years drafts, too. They didn't execute that, either.
It will get incrementally better, I'm sure. It will never be as good.
And the one way we know that did work, that was good, they've gone away from.
The new CBA could have been an opportunity to rejig the calendar and give a little more cushion for teams and agents between the draft and free agency, too. The league doesn't even need to crack it open and remake it all to give them that cushion, either. One or two more days of breathing room could have made all the difference. If the league had decided to move back to the centralized draft format, some teams were prepared to stick around in the draft city and run their free agency out of there as well.
There was talk among teams and within the league about returning to a centralized draft and doing it in major airport hubs to alleviate some of the potential for travel headaches during crunch time. A rotation with cities like Dallas, Montreal and Vegas — cities that have direct flights from almost anywhere — was discussed. Some smaller markets would have lost out in that scenario, too, but it could have been a compromise.
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Certainly, so long as this is the format they're committed to, we'll never get a moment anything like the gasps and then roar that we got at the Bell Centre when Juraj Slafkovský's name was announced as the No. 1 pick.
The question should be as simple as 'What's best for the product and the fans?'
The league, I'm sure, would argue that nothing's that simple and talk about all of the factors I've highlighted above, plus some others, as things they have to consider. But it's always easier to find ways to complicate a decision than it is to be laser-focused on the simplest truths.
As with digital board ads, or the divisional playoff format, I'm sure the league will tell its fans that, actually, you like the new, better-for-them-financially, less grand, watered-down version of what everyone else does way. But actually, the fans won't.
And then year after year, the powers that be in the NHL will continue to wonder why their sport is small fry.
