As the 2019-20 NHL season continues it’s maturation, the balls have finally dropped on Phase 1 of the NHL’s Draft Lottery and once again, so have the Red Wings.

As was the most-likely scenario, Detroit dropped to fourth overall, with the Kings and a placeholder team moving into the top three.

With the odds against Detroit picking first overall at a staggering 81.5%, I don’t want to speak for all Red Wings fandom, but I’m going to go ahead and say I’m still allowed to be disappointed by a thing that’s not actually surprising.

The good news is that Detroit will have a lot of great options to choose from among players not named Alexis Lafrenière. Our own Josh Pickering recently took a look at those options.

Personally for me (who is very bad at scouting and has never correctly guessed the path of any 18-year olds, let alone hockey players), I put the priorities at Quinton Byfield and Tim Stützle in that order.

We’ll know more about when the draft will actually happen once we figure out a few other hockey-related items (like actually having the playoffs), so lots of questions still to be answered, but in the meantime, we’ve got a whole bunch of time to argue over which kid we’re pinning hopes on.