The Philadelphia Flyers NHL Draft Lottery Primer

Flyers NHL Draft Lottery – Tonight, the bingo balls will roll and drop, subsequently determining the fate of this year’s lucky contestants for the first overall pick.

The lottery odds were determined by the place each team fell in the standings, and they’ll be represented by the number of balls each team has in the machine.

There will be two separate rolls, one for the first overall selection and another for the second overall selection. From those two rolls, the order of 3-16 will be determined by the remainers.

If a team previously below you win the lottery, you’ll drop down one selection spot. If two teams previously below you win the lottery, you’ll drop down two selection spots.

Philadelphia Flyers NHL Draft Lottery Odds

N̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ tell us the odds. 🎰#NHLDraftLottery pic.twitter.com/sJkMdIWQwD

— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) May 4, 2025

The Flyers themselves helpfully explained the percentage likelihood of each. The Flyers have a 15.4% chance at staying put at 4th overall and a 19.3% chance at moving up. In total, they have a 34.7% chance of drafting where they finished in the standings or higher.

It’s a bit gloomy, and it’s by design. The product of anti-tanking machinations by the NHL sees Philly having a 44.6% chance at dropping 1 spot and a 20.8% chance at dropping two to create a 65.4% chance that they draft lower than they finished in the standings.

For a bit of fun, I did an exercise where I used the prior results of the Flyers’ lotteries since 2017 to create the probability that they win the next one.

This isn’t legitimate by league rules, as each roll is unique and there’s no rule that you have to finally win one ever. However, by simple math, each time you don’t win the lottery and you draw from the lottery, you’re more likely to win it the next time.

This is definitely not advice to go play the actual lottery, because you’re only moving incredibly small amounts with each iteration! The 8th decimal place MIGHT shift.

The Flyers, however, have greater odds of winning their lottery, so the math is more interesting.

By my calculations, the Flyers have a 61.7% chance of having won A lottery from 2017 until now.

Given those calculations, the Flyers have an actual probability of 52.7% to be drafting Mathew Schaefer or Michael Misa in June.

This is, of course, the Flyers. So really, even a 99.7% probability is far from a certainty.

But math is on their side in a way that it usually isn’t! Let’s see if luck follows suit.

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