The NHL learned a valuable lesson at the 2025 draft: If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.
Coming off the objectively coolest draft in the league’s storied history held at Sphere in Las Vegas in 2024, the league went to a remote format this year. It made for awkward, repetitive on-stage interviews and the first round lasted nearly five hours.
Both before and after the draft, the league made it clear that the format only changed because the team executives wanted it to — a 26-6 split when the 32 teams voted.
But regardless, it was on the league’s shoulders to still make it interesting, which the overwhelming majority of fans don’t think was the case.
Heck, even the people getting paid to watch it didn’t want to be there. At the Utah Mammoth’s draft event at a hotel in downtown Salt Lake City, I was the only one who stayed past pick 20 or so. Even the management and scouting staff had abandoned their table (though they may have migrated to another room).
The change was meant to accomplish a few things:
Limit travel costs.Provide a quieter, more intimate environment for teams to make decisions.Make the busiest week of the offseason less hectic for team executives.
Did the teams accomplish what they wanted to with the new format?
How did the teams like the new NHL Draft format?
Mammoth director of amateur scouting Ryan Jankowski gave his opinion in a press conference after the draft concluded.
“It’s good and bad,” he said. “I think the good of it is that you’re in that room, you can talk freely with each other, you can hear each other, you can have everybody in that room, where you’re limited to so many people on the draft floor.
“The bad part about it is that you’re not with the rest of the league.”
Jankowski missed the buzz that accompanies the draft when everyone’s in a central location, noting that amateur scouts rarely get to go to NHL games so they don’t often experience the excitement surrounding the teams they work for.
“There (were) benefits to being in that room, too,” he said. “You can have some fun. You can have some laughs, joke around a little bit, so it brings up the camaraderie and actually makes the decision-making maybe a little bit easier because you can ask those questions, but you do miss the excitement of being at the draft.”
Detroit Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman, who was reportedly among the voices pushing for the decentralized format in the first place, has not changed his stance.
“I personally like it,” he said in a press conference after the first round of the draft. “I just think it’s easier. We’re in a quieter room, it’s a little bit more relaxed for us.”
He did note, though, that he wasn’t a fan of how long any of the league’s remote drafts have dragged on, whether it be this one or the two held during the pandemic.
Before the draft, Los Angeles Kings president of hockey operations Luc Robitaille gave his opinion in an interview with NHL.com’s Nick Cotsonika.
“Some people like it, some people don’t,” he said. “I put a lot of value on what scouts do in the season and the traveling and so forth, so the less distraction you have when you’re in the room when it’s time to make a decision that can impact a franchise for 10-plus years, I think it’s very important.
“Is the show itself, being on the floor and talking to everyone fun? Yes, but at the end of the day, that draft every year could make or break a franchise.”
Washington Capitals assistant GM Ross Mahoney said the format didn’t change his team’s process.
“The sense of how we approach things is no different, but you don’t have the same atmosphere of being on the draft floor with all the other teams, and the media and all the parents in the stands,” he said.
“But as far as we approach it, it’s the same.”
One unnamed NHL executive told EliteProspects’ Cam Robinson that although this year’s draft wasn’t perfect, it’s not beyond repair.
“The draft shouldn’t be about executives or GMs or whatever,” the executive said. “Look at the NFL draft: It’s just a quick shot to a war room, nothing more.
“If you just went and copied the most popular draft there is — think about how many people watch the NFL draft — no one would be complaining about where everyone was sitting.”
What needs to change for the 2026 NHL Draft?
The NHL is keeping the decentralized draft next year after the teams voted again.
If they want to hold the public’s attention with a remote draft, they needs to create a product that people want to watch. Here are a few tweaks that would make for a much more watchable product.
A shorter clock
In most cases, teams know exactly who they’re taking immediately. Why not just announce the pick in the first minute or two on the clock?
There could be an option for teams to request more time in the event that they need it, but the majority of them wouldn’t. Also, enforcing the clock might be a good choice. On the second day of the 2024 draft especially, teams consistently got several warnings after their time had run out, sometimes spanning several minutes.
No team ever received any type of public punishment for it.
Less content on each player
The current system is designed to be able to show a brief analysis of each player, as well as an interview with the bulk of them.
Realistically, people care about those for the first three to five picks, but that’s about it.
Teams’ social media groups and beat reporters will release an abundance of interesting stuff about those players within minutes of the official announcement. There’s no reason to show it to the other 31 fanbases, who will let it go through one ear and out the other.
And, again, most of the on-stage interviews this year were awkward and repetitive. Those really need to go.
More creativity
Whether you care about hockey or not, you probably got a kick out of Roger McQueen’s helicopter trip to Disneyland to take photos with Lightning McQueen. It brought out a side of the player that fans otherwise wouldn’t have seen.
If the league could pull off two or three things like that each year, the draft could become the most must-watch event of any sport’s offseason.
Move it back a few weeks
Here’s a snapshot of the NHL timeline in the early summer of 2025.
June 17: Stanley Cup awardedNHL Draft: June 27Development camps: June 29-July 3Free agency day: July 1
After that, the whole league goes on hiatus for two and a half months.
If they could spread out the excitement a little more, they could hold fans’ attention throughout the summer. It would decrease the fatigue on executives and team employees, too.