NHL Entry Draft Order

## Teams that missed the playoffs

All teams that miss the playoffs are ordered based on the regular season standings worst-first from 1 to 16. Barring changes due to the draft lottery, this is their positioning for all seven rounds.

### The Draft Lottery

These teams are all eligible to win the draft lottery and jump up 10 places in the order of the first round only. There are two drawings, and the first one determines the first overall team.

If a 12th-16th place team wins that first drawing and leaves the last place team at first overall, the last place team is then guaranteed that spot.

The second drawing will jump another team up in the order to, at best, second overall.

## Conference Quarter-  and Semi-finalists

Teams that lose in the first or second round of the playoffs are ordered 17-28 in reverse order of their regular season standings order.

### Division Winners

Any teams that won their division and lose in the first two rounds of the playoffs must pick 25th through 28th, again in reverse order of regular season standings. If only one division winner loses in the first two rounds, that team is assigned 28OA.

Very often, this doesn't change anything because division winners tend to be pretty high in the standings. The last time it happened was in 2022 when the Calgary Flames (Pacific division champions, 111 standings points) picked 26OA after the Toronto Maple Leafs (Eastern division runner up, 115 standings points) at 25OA and the Minnesota Wild (Central division runner up, 113 standings points) at 24OA.

## The Top 4

Picks 29-32 are:

29: The losing conference finalist with the worse regular season record  
30: The losing conference finalist with the better regular season record  
31: The Stanley Cup runner-up  
32: The Stanley Cup winner

[Source](//www.nhl.com/info/hockey-operations-guidelines)