Just one year ago, the NHL was on a roll. The 2024 Draft at the Sphere in Las Vegas was a total showstopper. Huge crowd, big trades, wild energy. Fast-forward to 2025, and the vibe couldn’t be more different. This year’s draft at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles felt more like a Zoom meeting than a sports event. As outrage spread, all eyes turned to the NHL for answers, and Commissioner Gary Bettman became the scapegoat. But hold on… that story just got flipped.
Well, fans and viewers got a reality check on June 27!! American NHL insider Frank Seravalli, a well-known NHL reporter, jumped into the fray and told fans to blame the right people. “No idea why the NHL is taking bullets like this,” he posted. “Teams pleaded to try it this way, craving war room privacy and travel savings. Against the commissioner’s advice, teams voted 26–6 to go to a decentralized Draft. So the league simply said, ‘your wish is my command.’ Blame the 26.” Just like that, the focus shifted, and suddenly, it wasn’t the league office behind the curtain, but the 26 teams who made this call.
So, yes, Seravalli is just exposing the truth and in doing so, he’s urging the NHL to stand up and defend itself. In his eyes, the league is getting slaughtered for something it tried to warn teams about. The whole story gained traction when Seravalli noticed John Wawrow’s post on X, which called out the chaos of this year’s draft: “After pulling off the most entertaining draft at the Sphere in Las Vegas a year ago, the NHL produced a clunky, glitchy, awkward — and long — spectacle of an event in L.A., not even the Goo Goo Dolls could save with a mention of La Nova.” That’s when Frank Seravalli jumped in, clearing the air and flipping the blame. Suddenly, the narrative shifted. But before we get to who’s responsible for the mess, let’s first break down what a “decentralized draft” actually is, because that’s where the trouble began.
No idea why the NHL is taking bullets like this. Teams pleaded to try it this way, craving war room privacy and travel savings. Against the commissioner’s advice, teams voted 26-6 to go to a decentralized Draft. So the league simply said, “your wish is my command.” Blame the 26. https://t.co/wtWx8lJ3Ip
— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) June 28, 2025
So, it’s when teams don’t physically attend the draft venue. Instead, they make picks from their home bases, connected via high-tech camera setups, while the prospects, Commissioner, and media remain on stage in the draft city. By mid-2023, many NHL front offices began lobbying for this setup, citing three reasons: lower travel costs, greater privacy during trade talks, and tech tools that supposedly made in-person attendance unnecessary. The logic? Why pay hundreds of thousands to travel when remote tools? But was Commissioner Bettman on board with this plan? Actually, no, he wasn’t!
The fallout from the NHL’s decentralized draft
Gary Bettman was never on board with the NHL’s switch to a decentralized draft. He strongly resisted the change, arguing that the traditional, centralized draft created the fan energy, provided key branding moments, and helped show hockey to sponsors and new audiences. At the October 2023 Board of Governors meeting, Bettman told teams that the in-person draft and that the league would “ if they’re comfortable leaving it this way or if they want to go back the other way.” But acknowledging the push came from the clubs themselves, Bettman called the decentralized format a “test drive” meant to “really be the preference of the clubs” and promised the format would be revisited after collecting team feedback.
When the time came to vote, however, 26 out of 32 teams sided with the new plan, approving the decentralized draft for 2025. That June, the NHL rolled out the new format at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Instead of a lively in-person event, over 100 team camera feeds were stitched together remotely while prospects awkwardly crossed a half-empty stage. The reaction was swift and harsh. TSN’s Darren Dreger put the blame squarely on the clubs, saying, “If you vote again, I’m going to guess it’ll be 32 to nothing to go back to the old self.” Steve Mayer, the league’s Content & Events President, admitted, “We thought this would be simpler, and it’s actually become way more complicated.” So what went wrong?
The 2025 draft was plagued by technical glitches, including slow feed switches, laggy camera angles, and Zoom-like delays during interviews. Without teams physically present, the draft lost its live interaction and spontaneous energy, no buzz from last-minute trades or on-the-fly reactions.
The awkward “Draft House” interview segments felt scripted and forced, and even a live performance by the Goo Goo Dolls couldn’t lift the mood. Fans and insiders alike called the event “robotic,” “lifeless,” and an experiment that missed the mark, making it clear the NHL has some serious thinking to do before next year’s draft. So, after all this, who’s really to blame? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!
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