Jun 27, 2025; Los Angeles, California, USA; NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman greets fans to start the first round of the 2025 NHL Draft at Peacock Theater. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

NHL Likely Keeping Decentralized Draft Format

Originally posted on Breakaway on SI | By Jon Alfano | Last updated Jul 12, 2025 5:00 PM ET

The 2025 NHL Draft was marked a first for the league. Instead of having all 32 teams in attendance, clubs would instead operate operate from a war room in their home markets, similar to how the NFL and NBA drafts operate.

To say there were some growing pains with this format would be an understatement. The first round alone lasted four and a half hours, as not only did most teams have a celebrity announce their pick, but they also had each prospect walk to a back room to do a Zoom interview with their new team before even starting the clock for the next pick. The later rounds flowed a bit better, but it was still not a good viewing experience.

Despite many fans voicing their displeasure, those within the league seem to prefer this format. TSN's Darren Dreger reports that the "strong majority of general managers" are in favor of keeping the decentralized draft format going forward. The good news is that the league is looking into "production tweaks" to help the flow of the first round.

Reporting on this only because I’m a bit surprised by the outcome. Expect the NHL to give the Decentralized Draft model another try next year. Strong majority of GM’s voted in favour of the new status quo with some potential production tweaks to move the 1st round along.
— Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) July 12, 2025

On Friday, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said that many teams are in favor of the decentralized format.

"What I will say is we continue to see support for a decentralized draft (from the clubs)," Daly said in an interview on "The FAN Morning Show". "A lot of the issues seem to be having efficient access to your hockey operations personnel in kind of a quiet, businesslike setting. I think our clubs take the draft very, very seriously, as they should. It goes to kind of define the future of the franchise, making good decisions and the right decisions from a team standpoint in a draft context. Given how crowded the end of our season has become with all the obligations clubs, managers and players have toward the very end of the season leading up to free agency, I think the efficiency of not having to travel to a central location is something that's very appealing to a number of our clubs.

"We'll gather that information (from polling), we'll process it and we'll make decisions with respect to what next year looks like. I guess what I'll leave you with is a lot of the reasons for going to the decentralized draft have been reasserted in the context of polling (from) what we saw two weeks ago."

Daly added that the decision to move to a decentralized format was spurred on by the teams and not the league itself. Perhaps it's not a surprise this format is sticking around for another year at least.

This article first appeared on Breakaway on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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