NHL Teams Ignore Everyone And Vote For Another Decentralized Draft
Giving the people exactly what they don't want
Well, it's official: NHL teams would rather give everyone another weird, boring draft than travel to a city for a couple of days.
According to Sportsnet, just days after Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said that teams supported the league's move to a "decentralized" draft format, meaning teams stay at home instead of traveling to the draft had support from teams, he's been proven right as a league vote yielded the result of sticking with the format for next year.
This is terrible news for fans, who overwhelmingly hated the new format, which is supposed to help speed things along, but somehow did the exact opposite. The first round of the draft ended up taking more than four hours.
Worse yet, it gave us that weird NHL Draft House where players talked to their new teams' front offices like they were the Wizard of Oz, and it went about as smoothly as any time you've tried to FaceTime your grandparents on Christmas.
Lots of people talking over each other, awkward pauses, and audio issues.
The video board during Rounds 2-7 of the 2025 NHL Draft at Peacock Theater on June 28, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Juan Ocampo/NHLI via Getty Images)
I contend that the classic draft is far superior and the biggest reason for that was the excitement of seeing commotion at one team's table. It was always exciting when broadcasters were like "It looks like there's a little commotion over at the Detroit table," then a couple minutes later, the Commissioner heads to the podium and announces the trade.
We still had trades this year, but all you had were texts from insiders, nothing for fans to see.
But if there's a silver lining to this news, it's that the league is aware that the first edition of a decentralized draft was far from what you'd call "good." Daly noted that there's an "easy fix" to shorten up the 2026 version of the draft.