Did The NHL Screw Up The Draft Lottery? Here’s A Buffalo Sabres Conspiracy Theory

We should start by saying, no, the NHL draft was no fixed no matter how crappy you think it is that, AGAIN, the Edmonton Oilers will have the #1 pick in the draft. One Reddit user blew off his frustration by comings up with a conspiracy on how the Buffalo Sabres and the entire Western New York community were jipped out of Saturday's NHL draft lottery.

Honestly, his theory (to some degree) may be true, but the bottom line is that the draft was not fixed and no, there will be no debate over that. Perhaps, the NHL should think of a new way to pick draft positions in the future. But, this conspiracy theory is interesting.

According to Yahoo + Reddit

OK, here’s how the theory goes, via “McDavid2015,” whom we’re going to go ahead and guess might be a Buffalo Sabres fan:

- There’s a dude in charge of turning on the machine, hitting the vacuum/blower button and then hitting the button that sucks one ball up the tube.

- He’s told explicitly to hit that third button once every 10 seconds for reasons that we’re sure have something to do with the integrity of the draft.

- (As an aside, he looks like the kind of guy who gets blamed for screwing up something royally at the office, but who is generally well-liked for being a nice guy who brings Irish soda bread in on St. Patrick’s Day every year.)

- On the first ball, the lottery guy pushes the red button, and it emits a distinct sound: The button is pressed, and then clicks back into place.

- Inexplicably, it appears he hits the button a second time a split second later, as it emits the same sound.

- The No. 5 ball is sucked up into the tube. The No. 11 ball is right behind it, having been pushed into the tube by the second click of the button, before falling back to the tube.

.Reddit

- YOU HAD ONE JOB.

- He then selects Nos. 14, 6 and 1, and the combination gives the Edmonton Oilers the top pick. Each time, those are the only balls that go up the tube. Each time, the button click doesn’t sound like the initial “two clicks” from him.

The winning team had the No. 11 ball been counted (5-11-14-6)?

The Buffalo Sabres!