{"id":60400,"date":"2025-07-12T20:02:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T20:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/60400\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T20:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T20:02:09","slug":"nhl-teams-vote-in-favor-of-decentralized-2026-nhl-draft-source","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/60400\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL teams vote in favor of decentralized 2026 NHL Draft: Source"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Pierre LeBrun, Corey Pronman and Jeremy Rutherford<\/strong><\/p>\n

A majority of NHL clubs have voted in favor of a decentralized format for the 2026 NHL Draft, a league source confirmed to The Athletic\u2019s Pierre LeBrun.<\/p>\n

Prior to 2025, the NHL had a long history of doing its draft differently. Unlike other major leagues, which keep their front offices in home-based war rooms for the draft, the NHL used a centralized format, with all the team\u2019s decision makers on an arena floor.<\/p>\n

Aside from the pandemic-affected 2020 and 2021 drafts, the 2025 NHL Draft was the first year the league went to a decentralized model. The last in-person draft was in 2024 at Sphere in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

That old environment created great TV for fans and an easy way to create discourse for teams, but decision makers didn\u2019t love the format. They felt they lacked the necessary privacy for internal discourse on major team decisions. Management also expressed frustration with the calendar proximity to free agency, and ownership liked the appeal of cost savings.<\/p>\n

The league was criticized this summer for how the first round of the NHL Draft went, as it dragged on with several awkward moments<\/a> led by the \u2018NHL Draft House\u2019 virtual interviews between the prospects and their new managers. That said, ratings were quite strong<\/a>, and to the league\u2019s credit, the second day of the draft flowed very well, and much better than the COVID-era remote drafts. The league could learn from what didn\u2019t work to put on a better day one experience in 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, all of the prospects were there,\u201d Philadelphia Flyers\u2019 second round pick Shane Vansaghi said about the setup. \u201cWe were all getting picked, we were all walking up there and putting on our jerseys and we were all getting drafted into the NHL. That\u2019s the point of the draft in my opinion. Also, I\u2019ve never been in person, so that was my normal. I\u2019ve watched the drafts on TV and it seemed very put together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are things people can complain about, but as a prospect at the draft, I had a great experience and my family had a great time. It was one of those moments and experiences that will last with me forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the average fan won\u2019t care about this detail, keeping the draft decentralized makes the NHL the only league without a marquee convention-like event. The MLB has the Winter Meetings, the NFL has the draft combine, and NBA has its summer league.<\/p>\n

(Photo: Bruce Bennett \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Pierre LeBrun, Corey Pronman and Jeremy Rutherford A majority of NHL clubs have voted in favor of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":60401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-60400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114842051888489153","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}