On Dealing with Conditional Draft Picks

## The Fourth Round

Today, we're going to rant a little about Steve and Don and the 2025 NHL Draft's fourth round. That's right, the fourth round.

### The Setup

Back in March 2023, Detroit traded Tyler Bertuzzi to Boston for a 1st in 2024 (that went to Ottawa for Alex Debrincat and back to Boston for Linus Ullmark and was used to select Dean Letourneau) and a 4th. As interesting as the 1st is, the 4th is the star here. It gives Detroit two 4ths.

That August, Detroit acquires Jeff Petry for Gustav Lindström and a 4th, the lower of Detroit's two. Media was careful in their reporting and called it a "conditional fourth round pick". Cap tracking sites had to make a decision. Will this be Boston's or Detroit's? The choice is pretty obvious: it'll be Detroit's.

The primary contract/trade tracker at this time was CapFriendly, and you can see an archive of Jeff Petry's trade page on their site [here](//web.archive.org/web/20240609215834/https://www.capfriendly.com/trades/players/jeff-petry).

Almost a year later in July 2024, Detroit traded Robby Fabbri and their other 4th to Anaheim. The earlier one. As before, the media reported it carefully and cap sites had to make a choice. It was going to be Boston's.

To complete today's headache, Jacob Trouba was traded to Anaheim in December 2024 for the later of Anaheim's two 4ths. For those of you keeping track, Anaheim owns their own 4th rounder and the earlier of Detroit and Boston's 4th rounders. They're sending the lower of those two picks to the Rangers.

That's confusing. [NHL.com](//www.nhl.com/news/new-york-rangers-trade-jacob-trouba-to-anaheim-ducks) called it "a conditional fourth round pick" and didn't elaborate. [ESPN](https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/42817958/sources-rangers-move-trouba-send-captain-ducks) and [SportsNet](https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/rangers-trade-captain-jacob-trouba-to-ducks) both said that the Rangers would get the later of Anaheim and Detroit's 4ths. For reference, the [NHL standings that day](//www.nhl.com/standings/2024-12-06/league) have Boston in 13th and Detroit in 28th.

### The Collapse

This seemed like a safe bet. The Bruins hadn't finished below the Red Wings in the standings since 2015-2016, and it held for a while. On Feb 1, the Bruins were still ahead of the Red Wings in the standings with the season about 60% complete. The Red Wings pulled ahead the next day, and the Bruins committed to the tank.

That brings us to today and reconciling conditional draft picks. Many of them confirm that we made the right guesses. San Jose gets Winnipeg's 4th not Dallas' 3rd because Dallas didn't make the cup final. The first that Columbus got from Minnesota for David Jiříček doesn't get bumped to 2026. Pittsburgh doesn't get Florida's 7th because Magnus Hellberg didn't play two playoff games for Florida in 2024.

But for Steve's conditions and Don's tank job, we have to swap the assumed picks for three trades. 

1. Detroit now sends their own 4th to Montreal in the Petry deal instead of Boston's.
2. Anaheim gets Boston's 4th instead of Detroit's.
3. Anaheim sends their own 4th to the Rangers because their 4th is later than Boston's.

All this to say, conditional picks are crazy. Can we keep this kind of thing to the first two or maybe three rounds? Do we really multi-layered conditional picks in the 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7th?

Each condition on its own was fine, but together they turned in to a major headache.