Devils win draft lottery!

The New Jersey Devils had a less than four percent chance of winning the NHL Draft Lottery held last night.

If the lottery was any indication of the luck swinging back in the right direction,things are looking great in Newark.
The Devils won the draft lottery in their first ever appearance in the format and moved from eighth to fourth in the first round,so now the team will be able to add a top five level talent to their system.
The lottery rules in effect allow a team to jump a maximum of four spots,so that is why New Jersey jumped to only fourth.
The unfortunate part of the win over Boston last Sunday is this-Had the Devils lost that game and been the lottery winner,they would have moved to second in the draft.
That will likely be the difference in landing Swedish defenseman Adam Larsson and not,but the Devils will be landing a quality prospect the type that they could only dream of adding in the past.
I still will not complain as despite missing the playoffs,the Devils gave me some excellent hockey to watch over the last few months,righted the ship and will STILL land a top five level prospect in the draft-You cannot ask for more than that from a non-playoff team....
The ISS prospect rankings lists centers in three of the top six. positions.
1. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, F 4/12/93 L 6.00.5 170 Red Deer WHL
2. Adam Larsson RD 11/12/92 R 6.03 209 Skelleftea SweE
3. Gabriel Landeskog, , LW 11/23/92 L 6.00.25 205 Kitchener OHL
4. Sean Couturier, C 12/7/92 L 6.04 195 Drummondville QMJHL
5. Ryan Murphy, , RD 3/31/93 R 5.10.25 168 Kitchener OHL
6. Ryan Strome, C 7/11/93 R 6.00.25 183 Niagara OHL



If I had to guess on the pick of these players,I would guess that the Devils would be hoping for Larsson to fall to them,but will likely wind up with Sean Couturier,a center that was rated number one in the ISS (International Scouting Service) rankings as recently as December.
Back in the next few days with my thoughts on the Devils head coaching search.





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