Why the NHL will make changes after this year’s draft at Sphere

Hockey fans who enjoy huddled activity and last-minute trades playing out on the NHL entry draft floor had best take one final look this weekend. 

This year’s two-day draft, starting with Friday night’s opening round at the Sphere venue in Las Vegas, will be the final in-person event attended by staffs of all 32 teams. Starting next year, the plan is to have top prospects and one or two officials from each team on hand at a much smaller venue (between 5,000 and 10,000 seats), while general managers and their staff members pick virtually from “war rooms” in their base cities. 

That will end a 44-year era now exclusive to the NHL among major professional sports leagues and eliminate the hustle and bustle of draft tables on arena floors. 

“Personally, I like the idea,” said Kraken GM Ron Francis, who will pick No. 8 overall and then has eight more selections during the final seven rounds beginning Saturday morning. “Our first [Kraken] draft was that way due to COVID-19, and I really liked how it worked.”

Francis said a buddy from his Pittsburgh Penguins playing days, former Steelers coach Bill Cowher, tipped him off years ago that it was easier to work drafts remotely.

“That is how we do our drafts anyway,” Francis said. “Day 1, we have all our guys at the table. Day 2, we have them work remotely in a war room in constant communication with our draft table.

“I just feel they have more room to work and talk, versus being jammed at the table.”

Plenty of NHL counterparts apparently share his sentiment, complaining that noise from the busy draft floor and thousands of area patrons made it difficult to make quick decisions and negotiate deals on site. Team owners were also increasingly reluctant to host the event, with arena scheduling difficult and financial benefits going mostly to cities and tourism rather than the actual clubs. 

Plus, the 31 teams not hosting stand to save big on travel costs.

As with last year, when Connor Bedard went No. 1 overall to Chicago, there’s little top-pick suspense. Boston University forward Macklin Celebrini, 18, from British Columbia will almost certainly be taken first by the San Jose Sharks in a draft said to have deeper top-end talent than the event 12 months ago in Nashville, Tenn.

Russian forward Ivan Demidov from Saint Petersburg, or Belarusian defenseman Artyom Levshunov is expected to be taken by Chicago at No. 2. It’s a bit of a toss-up after that, though pre-draft speculation about players and the order they’ll go in has been largely usurped this past week by buzz throughout the sports world and beyond about the pending logistical switch, and especially this year’s Sphere location.

The draft is at Sphere because T-Mobile Arena had a scheduling conflict with a UFC event. But that’s worked out well for the league, given Sphere in less than a year has become the talk of the music and entertainment world — integrating unprecedented graphics and virtual technology within the 18,600-seat facility just east of the Vegas strip.

Built by Madison Square Garden Co., Sphere is the world’s largest spherical building, containing a massive 16K resolution wraparound indoor screen that can simulate virtual reality scenarios and provide a multisensory experience for those inside and watching from home.

U2 opened the domed venue with a 40-show residency last September, incorporating graphics on the 160,000-square-foot screen — its 16K format offers the world’s highest resolution — that included giant holograms of the band’s performers. It also simulated the concert being outdoors at times, in both day and night settings despite the interior location.

The NHL will be the first major sports entity to broadcast live from Sphere, leading to speculation about how the unique technology will be incorporated.

“We’ve set out to create the most amazing introduction to the NHL for these young players and their families in the most innovative venue in the world,” said NHL chief content officer Steve Mayer, who worked with Sphere’s in-house content team on draft preparations.

Content is to include custom graphics for all 32 teams, displaying key statistical highlights and notable former picks for each club. There will also be what the league termed an “immersive draft selection board” displayed while teams are on the clock making their picks.

Live footage from inside will also be displayed on the venue’s cylindrical exterior via its Exosphere screen.  

On the draft itself, the expected heftier top-end talent is good news for the Kraken given their eighth overall pick. They have five picks in the first three rounds — including Nos. 40 and 68 in the second round and Nos. 73 and 88 in the third round. There’s also the No. 105 pick in the fourth round, No. 169 in the sixth and Nos. 201 and 202 in the seventh.

Prospects that could be around by No. 8 overall include major junior forwards Beckett Sennecke from the Oshawa Generals and Tij Iginla from the Kelowna Rockets, as well as left-handed shot defenseman Sam Dickinson from the London Knights.

There are also five highly rated defensemen that could go top 10.

The Kraken could grab one of Dickinson, or overseas and North American prospect defensemen Levshunov, Zeev Buium, Anton Silayev or Zayne Parekh if any remain, given they took first-round forwards in their initial three drafts — centers Matty Beniers and Shane Wright, and then winger Eduard Sale at No. 20 a year ago.

Two years ago, the Kraken were expected to snag a defenseman at No. 4 overall until prior consensus No. 1 Wright became surprisingly available.

After Montreal took Juraj Slafkovsky at No. 1 overall, Wright fell three more spots to the Kraken. Wright then appeared to stare down the Montreal draft table in heading to the stage.

Though Wright later denied staring, such unscripted drama will be a casualty of the switch to remote selection rooms after this weekend.

From 1963-79, drafts were privately held in Montreal hotel boardrooms or the NHL head office in that city. But the draft went public in 1980, when 2,500 fans filed into the Montreal Forum and could voice their displeasure in person at the hometown Canadiens for infamously picking Doug Wickenheiser at No. 1 overall instead of local junior star Denis Savard, who went to Chicago at No. 3 and enjoyed a Hall of Fame career. 

Four years later, The Forum hosted a memorable first televised draft as Montreal junior product Mario Lemieux went to the Penguins at No. 1. The Canadiens shocked everybody by using the No. 5 pick on star Czechoslovakian defenseman Petr Svoboda, who few knew had just defected. Svoboda walked out on the arena floor to gasps from the crowd. The Canadiens had quietly flown him in from West Germany after his unpublicized defection and stashed him in a local hotel room so teams picking before them wouldn’t know he was free to play.

It proved the first big in-person coup for NHL draft-day drama and the rest, as they say, is history. As will be teams making such picks, good or bad, from the arena floor after this weekend.