NHL Draft
Penguins’ Latest Loss: Lottery Drops Them in Draft Order
The Pittsburgh Penguins slipped down to the No. 11 pick in the 2025 NHL Draft in the draft lottery conducted Monday evening.
It still will be their highest selection since 2012, when they claimed defenseman Derrick Pouliot with the eighth overall choice, which had been acquired from Carolina in the Jordan Staal trade a few hours earlier.
The top selection in the draft went to the New York Islanders, who entered the lottery with the 10th-best odds (3.5 percent) of winning it, while Utah moved up 10 spots, the maximum allowed, to secure the No. 4 pick in a follow-up lottery.
Both of those clubs finished behind the Penguins in the overall standings, which is why the Penguins slid two spots in the draft order.
San Jose, which had the league’s worst record during the regular season, dropped to the No. 2 spot when the Islanders won the lottery.
The Penguins, who finished the regular season with the ninth-worst record in the league, entered the lottery with a five percent chance of landing the first pick.
They were one of seven teams still with a chance to get the top selection until the fourth and final ping-pong ball was drawn. The others were San Jose, Chicago, Seattle, Buffalo, Philadelphia and the Islanders.
The lottery was performed in real-time during TV broadcasts in the U.S. and Canada, an apparent attempt to stifle the inevitable conspiracy theories that it had been rigged in favor of whichever team finished in the top spot.
Here is the current order of selection for Round 1 of the draft, which is scheduled to be conducted June 27-28 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles:
1. New York Islanders
2. San Jose
3. Chicago
4. Utah
5. Nashville
6. Philadelphia
7. Boston
8. Seattle
9. Buffalo
10. Anaheim
11. Penguins
12. New York Rangers
13. Detroit
14. Columbus
15. Vancouver
16. Montreal (via trade with Calgary)
The Rangers have the option of giving their first-rounder to the Penguins this year or doing so in 2026, as part of the trade that sent Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor to Vancouver.
Absolutely brutal! But thank goodness they went 10-5-2 the last 5-6 weeks of season! I mean how pathetic….all of those meaningless empty wins….all they did was assure they wouldn’t get one of the 5-6 elite players in this draft! Pens have zero shot at becoming a legit contender again until they are able to draft at least 2 “elite” prospects who have top 6 franchise player potential. As of today Pens have exactly ZERO players in their system like this.
This. 100%.
But hey, they demonstrated “character” and showed the young kids how to win in The Show, I guess. Pffft.
Keep in mind Rust & Guentzel were both 3rd round picks…
Horny was the very last pick 7th round in 2005
Tom Brady was a 6th rounder. Gems can be found.
Tom is football this is hockey
They are solid, however they are support beams in the overall structure.
So was Letang.
If they won a couple more they would have finished 10th and got that 1st pick
People will down-vote you but they won’t refute the factual accuracy of your statement…
Exactly Gable!
your comments make no sense. you are bitching about the pens record down the stretch but the two teams who passed them in the lottery had BETTER records than the Pens. Bitch about the lottery if you want but even the team with the worst overall record didn’t secure the top pick.
I hope they don’t but I bet The Rangers give that pick up this year. The 12th selection will be decent, but you dont’ gamble that an injury to Igor and a couple forwards have. you miss the playoffs again and you do what the Isles did, just to hand the genrational pick over to your division for=e. We will have back to back picks this year.
I’m assuming the keep the pick. They just signed the coach they’ve been wanting and have 8.42 million in cap space (without dumping any dead weight) to improve. Im guessing they bet on themselves to improve and take the high pick now while available.
Trade up or trade down. Don’t do back-to-back picks with #11 and #12 this year
Notable #11 picks of the past 20+years, include players like Filip Forsberg, Kevin Fiala, Anze Kopitar, Ryan Ellis, Mr. Jeff Carter, Jarome Iginla, Brandon Sutter, Sam Dickinson, Lawson Crouse, Gabe Vilardi and Conor Geekie, to name a few.
And…
at #12 we have players such as Martin Necas, Noah Dobson, Matt Boldy, Cam Fowler, Ryan McDonagh, Marc Staal, Tyler Myers, Zeev Buium, Anton Lundell and Marian Hossa.
So, I believe there’s a pretty good chance, the Penguins can get a good prospect at #11. And perhaps, a decent #12 as well 🤷🏻‍♂️
Honorable #10. Mikko Rantanen đź‘€
I thought the process was well done. It looked like it could’ve gone our way for a bit there. A good idea by the league, for sure.
Does anyone else feel like that entire presentation made it seem more plausible that it’s rigged? They based the whole thing off a bunch of math they did before hand and didn’t show you how it turned into 14 balls or how those numbers were assigned to the teams.
So what exactly is the math the NHL used and why did they draw 4 ping pong balls instead of just 1? No wonder people think it’s rigged. They took something so simple and made it way too complicated.
It comes off idiotic to the causal fan. Thats day job crap, just make it plain, simple and to the point. Felt like I needed a few drinks, a cigar and a group of screaming folks to feel at home with this process.
They did that last year and seasons prior with the exciting envelope opening. Yawn.
I would like to see if they could offer the 11th to Tampa for Howard. Mcgroaty was a 14th pick trade (yeager) as long as Howard will sign I’d be OK giving up the 11th for an nhl ready contributer who just won the hobey baker. Half of the last 11 are or were (Johnny hockey) superior talents
Sure am glad we won those meaningless games in April! That’ll have way more influence on the next championship window than drafting a blue-chip prospect will!
They were exactly 3 points from getting number one selection. Think about it.
Radim Mrtka might work.
Rangers should give us their 1st rounder this year
Not backbreaking and not a big deal, there’s good players in this draft, but after about maybe pick 4 or 5, there really, in my opinion isn’t a big difference between pick 6 to 14. Would rather win the draft lottery next year, as there is a much bigger prize in next year’s draft, yes I’m of course referring to Gavin McKenna.
Honestly probably the stupidest draft format in the history of sports. Every other league does 1-30 or 1-32. Why make it overly complicated and let teams like the Islanders (who finished 10th from to bottom with 82 points) pick over teams who are helpless and need it like the Sharks, Blackhawks, and Predators this year.
To… uh… prevent teams from tanking? Like many here had been advocating for. 🙂 Like this years decentralized draft, the teams agreed with the format (good idea or not). Shrug. At least the Oilers (or any team) aren’t getting 4 or 5 #1 picks in a row anymore. smh.
Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah. That’s all I hear from Pens fans: Constant crying like babies, so that’s how I will treat all of you until you get it through your thick heads that a Lottery Pick is not going to happen. You keep wishing for a Lottery Draft Pick to happen but take the wise of Dubas: You can Wish in 1 hand and S*** in the other and see which gets filled first.