Draft Order Randomizer

Snake or linear

In a snake draft the order flips after every round. Seat one picks first in round one and last in round two, and the final seat does the reverse. Over a sixteen-round hockey draft that evens out most of the edge the top seat starts with, and it creates the turn: a pair of consecutive picks for whoever sits at either end, every time the order flips. Managers at the turn often use it to take two of the same thing before the room can react, two starting goalies, say, or two defencemen who run a power play. A linear draft repeats the same order every round, so the first seat is the best seat all night. Some keeper leagues prefer that, because it gives a rebuilding team a head start in every round rather than only the first, and some in-person pools simply find a fixed order easier to call out. You can switch between the two after a draw. The order stays exactly as drawn and only the pick numbers beside each team change, because the seed decides the order and the draft type decides what each seat is worth.

Equal odds or a weighted lottery

In a redraft league every team starts from nothing each fall, so equal odds are the natural choice: one ball each. A keeper or dynasty league is different, because rosters carry over and the team that finished last also kept the weakest group. Giving that team the best chance at the first pick is the fantasy version of what the NHL does with its own draft lottery for the clubs that miss the playoffs. The two share a problem as well. If finishing last guaranteed the first pick, a team out of the race by February would have a reason to stop setting its lineup. A weighted lottery takes most of that reason away. The worst team gets the best odds, not a promise, so losing on purpose buys far less.

Lottery by last finish, in numbers

Choose lottery by last finish and a table opens with one box per team. Enter where each team finished last season, 1 for the champion up to the league size for the last-place team, and that number becomes the team's count of balls in the hat. In a twelve-team league the balls add up to seventy-eight, twelve plus eleven and so on down to one. The last-place team holds twelve of them, about 15.4 percent of the first pick, and the champion holds one, about 1.3 percent. The odds column shows each team's chance before you draw, so the league can agree on the numbers first. An empty box is read from the order the names were typed, with the first line as the champion, and a number that cannot be a finishing position is treated as last place, so check the column before you press the button.

The draw then runs one pick at a time. The first seat is pulled from every ball in the hat, that team's balls come out, and the next seat is pulled from what remains. Because the hat shrinks with every pull, the teams still waiting see their odds rise.

Custom weights for your league's own rules

Plenty of league constitutions do not rank by plain finish, and custom weights cover them. Enter any positive number for each team; a team's chance at the first pick is its number divided by the total, so a team on 3 has three times the chance of a team on 1. A league that only wants to help the teams that missed its fantasy playoffs can weight those by finish and give every playoff team a 1. A gentler tilt might use 3, 2 and 1 for the bottom, middle and top thirds of last year's standings. A keeper league adding an expansion team, which arrives with no keepers at all, can give the newcomer the biggest number on the table. Anything that is not a positive number counts as 1.

Running the draw in front of the league

A draw only ends the argument if nobody can say it was done twice. The cleanest way is to run it live: share your screen on a call or hold up a phone at the draft table, press the button once, and paste the copied list into the group chat. The copied text includes the order, each team's first two picks, the settings used and the link. If your league misses the old ritual of names on slips of paper pulled from a toque, read the list from the bottom up so the first overall pick is announced last.

Finish the names before you press the button, because the link records the list as it stood when the order was drawn. The page takes two to twenty teams, and a count button fills in Team 1 to Team N for you to rename. Draw again is for a genuine mistake, such as a missing team or the wrong setting. It uses a fresh seed and so produces a new link, which anyone comparing links will notice, so say why you redrew.

What the link proves

A computer does not roll dice. It runs a fixed formula that turns one starting number, the seed, into a long run of numbers that behave like random ones, and the same seed always gives the same run. This page picks a new seed when you press the button, draws the order from it, and writes it into the page address next to the team names and settings. Nothing is stored on a server and there is no account, so that address is the whole record. Open it tomorrow or on another phone and the same order comes out. What a link cannot prove is that it was the first one drawn, which is why the public draw matters. The mock draft room uses the same generator, so a room link there replays its computer seats the same way. With the order settled, the keeper calculator prices the picks your keepers will cost from your seat, and the payout calculator settles the pot.