The Philadelphia Flyers closed their 2024-25 regular season with a 5-4 defeat against the Buffalo sabers on Thursday evening. But nobody really cares about the specific details of the game – how the goals have been scored or by whom – it’s just the result that matters and what it means for flyers in the next recovery lottery in a few weeks.
With this defeat in Buffalo, the flyers have now jumped both the Seattle Kraken and the Boston Bruins in the lottery classification – in the real classification, of course, they have stumbled and run away – to now have the 4th best rating.
The way everything comes down is quite good given where the flyers were a few hours ago. They have 9.5% chance of winning a lottery for the first or second choice, a tiny chance of 0.3% of the selection of a choice, 15.4% of chance of staying in the fourth place in total, of 44.6% chance of going down in fifth place, then to finish it with a chances of 20.8% of chances of lowering the two points to sixth.
| 1st in the general classification | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th |
| 9.5% | 9.5% | 0.3% | 15.4% | 44.6% | 20.8% |
Everything is arranged like that, it looks intimidating, but in reality, many things should happen. For the flyers to move at all, a team below them should win one of the lotteries for the first two choices – by the figures, the more the teams increase the chances that this happens, but it also rarely happened in the NHL, it seems unlikely. Not even based on mathematics, but just history.
There was no date set for this year’s project lottery, but there have been reports that he could fall on May 5 or 6, but nothing has been confirmed at the moment. As a rule, however, this occurs towards the end of the first round of the Stanley Cup qualifiers.
Now, how does it affect the chances of the flyers to get an impact player? For the draft of NHL 2025, there are specifically two players that everyone claims at the top of the Michael Misa center and defender Matthew Schaefer – the flyers would jump and whistle their path to the podium to select one or the other – but then he descends a level. The Boston College Center James Hagens, as well as some attackers like Porter Martone and Anton Frondell, should go to the next level.
Whatever the results of the lottery, this is massive for the flyers if the project takes place as planned (it never does). If the flyers remain in the fourth row in the general classification, they obtain a top six forward, like Hagens or Martone instead of hoping that someone like it is slipping into the seventh, where they could choose if they were winning on Thursday.
Given how the three San Jose Sharks, Chicago Blackhawks and Nashville Predators – The three teams above Philadelphia at the Draft Lottery – had a clearly worse records that the flyers this season is the best case. The flyers should have lost four other regulations to be in the place of predators in third place, and eight (!) More to be where the Blackhawks are in the second row. It would be catastrophic and an even more nightmare season than this team had already had it.
There is a silver lining to what we all miserable, we have all watched and suffered this team for 82 games.
