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To determine the winner, the official lottery machine is loaded with 14 balls, each bearing one number, 1 to 14. The NHL Draft Lottery involves drawing one set of four numbers from the machine. One ball is expelled from the machine at a ten-second interval until four balls are discharged.
Without regard to the order the numbers are drawn, there are exactly 1,001 four-number combinations. Each of the 14 teams in the NHL Draft Lottery is assigned the number of combinations corresponding to the odds allocated to them by their regular-season finish (i.e., the team given a 20% chance to win the NHL Draft Lottery is represented by 200 of the 1,001 possible combinations, the team with a 13.5% chance is assigned 135 combinations, and so forth). One combination (11, 12, 13, 14) has been designated as a "re-draw," allowing for the division of exactly 1,000 combinations proportionately.
All number combinations are assigned to teams at random by Bortz & Company.
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