Those Pittsburgh Penguins. They can't get anything right.
After posting the worst record in the National Hockey League - and making themselves the heavy favorites to win the annual draft lottery - the Penguins could only sit by and watch helplessly as their rivals in mediocrity, the Washington Capitals, won the lottery Tuesday and the right to draft highly coveted teenager Alexander Ovechkin with the first overall pick.
The draw was held in the NHL's New York offices.
The Capitals, who finished one point behind the Penguins in the overall standings, went into the lottery with the third best chance of winning, at 14.2 per cent. Under the weighted lottery system, only the five teams with the fewest points had the chance to win the first overall selection; no team could move up more than four spots and no team could move backward more than one.
The Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks, who would have picked first and second, respectively, now own the second and third drafting positions in the first round.
The Capitals have selected first overall twice in their 30-year history, picking defenceman Greg Joly in 1974, prior to their inaugural season, and defenceman Rick Green in 1976.
Joly became a fringe NHL player.
Green, meanwhile, turned into a serviceable pro, but not a franchise player in the way that Ovechkin could.
The Capitals purged many of their highest-paid players - including Jaromir Jagr, Robert Lang, Sergei Gonchar and Michael Nylander - at or near the trading deadline, embarking on an ambitious rebuilding program that will now get a major boost from the presence of the talented Russian, projected by some scouts as the best young talent to emerge in a decade.
The NHL's draft drawing is a weighted system designed to guarantee integrity in regular-season competition. The teams with the fewest points during the regular season receive the greatest chance of having their combination selected, but - as Pittsburgh learned - there are no guarantees.
The Penguins, who finished the regular season with the fewest points (58) were assigned the greatest number of combinations, representing a 25-per-cent likelihood that their combination would emerge. The Blackhawks, tied with the Capitals with the second-lowest point total (59) but placed lower in the standings by the tie-breaking criteria, were assigned 18.8 per cent of the combinations, followed by the Capitals (14.2%) and the Columbus Blue Jackets (10.7%).
The remaining teams had the following chances: 8.1%, 6.2%, 4.7%, 3.6%, 2.7%, 2.1%, 1.5%, 1.1%, 0.8% and 0.5%.
The Caps' lottery win marked the third time in four years that the team which finished third last moved up to the No. 1 spot in the league's annual entry draft. It happend to Atlanta in 2001 (the Thrashers picked Ilya Kovalchuk) and to Florida in 2002 (the Panthers traded their pick to Columbus, which selected Rick Nash).
