I think a few things need to happen:
1. At season’s end, they determine a preliminary lottery order based on regular season standings of non-playoff teams. Peg those teams to the pre-determined lottery odds by the NHL.
2. Anti-tank penalty: perennial lottery teams need to be have their lottery odds reduced, commensurate to where they picked in the previous 5 years. For example, Edmonton gets a 5% (50 ping pong balls out of 1000) reduction in lottery odds for every year they’ve picked 1st overall.
3. The odds taken away from the perennial lottery teams must be re-distributed to the rest of the lottery field for the current year draft. The league could distribute the odds where the teams that barely missed the playoffs could be rewarded with additional odds (ping pong balls) to draft in the top 5.
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