Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher
Some notes about the draft odds. Some of these websites aren't calculating them very well. For example lets say the worst team in the league wins the #1 pick which is the most likely outcome (20% chance). This alters the percentages for the next lottery. If the worst team wins (TOR in my example from todays standings) then the following percentages are in affect for the 2nd lottery:
EDM: 16.88%
CGY: 14.38%
WPG: 11.88%
BUF: 10.63%
ARI: 9.38%
VAN: 8.13%
CBJ: 7.5%
MTL: 6.25%
OTT: 4.38%
CAR: 3.75%
COL: 3.13%
NJ: 2.5%
PHI: 1.25%
Now compare those to what http://www.tankathon.com/nhl/pick_odds thinks our % chance should be.
If TOR wins we actually have a 14.38% chance of winning the 2nd lottery not the 11.4% tankathon says.
Now lets say EDM wins the 2nd lottery with the 16.88% chance. Then we'd have a 17.29% chance of winning the 3rd lottery not the 11.3% chance that tankathon says. Of course I'm giving the examples that end up giving us the highest chance just to show the disparity. The average result will be somewhere in the middle. But we should realize these tankathon odds are not calculated with everything in mind.
So if we did finish 3rd last we'd have a chance of picking top 3 somewhere between 43.17% and 34.8%. Not the 34.2% they say. |
Yes, the odds will change after the first lottery, but you can still calculate the overall odds of every possible outcome taking place beforehand.
Here are the initial odds for the first overall pick:
- 20.00%
- 13.50%
- 11.50%
- 9.50%
- 8.50%
- 7.50%
- 6.50%
- 6.00%
- 5.00%
- 3.50%
- 3.00%
- 2.50%
- 2.00%
- 1.00%
Let's use your example of the Flames' current position of 28th overall (3rd in the lottery). Their odds of picking 2nd overall will depend on who wins the first lottery like so:
- 14.38%
- 13.29%
- 0.00%
- 12.71%
- 12.57%
- 12.43%
- 12.30%
- 12.23%
- 12.11%
- 11.92%
- 11.86%
- 11.79%
- 11.73%
- 11.62%
The outcome of the first lottery changes the odds of the second, but you can combine the two sets of odds to come up with an overall chance that the 3rd-last team picks 2nd overall.
There's a 20% chance that the Flames will have a 14.38% chance of picking 2nd. There's an 11.5% chance that the Flames will win the first lottery and have no chance of picking 2nd overall.
The combined odds of the Flames winning the 2nd lottery after any given team wins the first are:
- 2.88%
- 1.79%
- 0.00%
- 1.21%
- 1.07%
- 0.93%
- 0.80%
- 0.73%
- 0.61%
- 0.42%
- 0.36%
- 0.29%
- 0.23%
- 0.12%
If you add those up, you get a total chance of the Flames picking 2nd overall of 11.43%. That's what the Tankathon odds are showing.
So, yes the odds change as more information becomes available, but you can still use the initial odds to calculate the possibility of every outcome happening and then determine how many times each team is likely to pick in any specific spot depending on all of those outcomes.