The NHL and NHLPA are close to a new collective bargaining agreement that would include solutions for the league's revenue losses the COVID-19 shutdown has caused, according to ESPN's Greg Wyshynski.

The framework discussed would extend the CBA for "around six years," Wyshynski adds.

All 700-plus players are expected to vote on a new CBA, and the return-to-play protocols to restart the league with an expanded 24-team playoff this summer. The league has yet to announce the two hub city locations where the games will be played.

As part of the potential agreement, the salary cap would reportedly remain stagnant at $81.5 million over the next three seasons.

One major point of contention has been escrow, which is a system that withholds a percentage of the players' salaries to ensure all hockey-related revenue is split equally between the NHL and the players. A huge loss in hockey-related revenue due to the hiatus has drastically altered the league's finances.

New York Rangers star Artemi Panarin and Anaheim Ducks veteran Ryan Kesler voiced their dissatisfaction about the high escrow levels, with the former saying the system has "protected the owners' income."

Due to the steep revenue losses, there was speculation escrow could rise as high as 35% for the players, according to Wyshynski. Under the current CBA structure being discussed, however, escrow has reportedly been capped at 20% for the first two seasons of the deal.

Both sides also reportedly support a 10% salary deferral for the players. That money would be paid to the players in two years under what is expected to be a lower escrow rate, which would help the owners' cash flow in the coming seasons.

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Social media users were left scratching their heads after watching the extremely unlikely and controversial result to the 2020 NHL Draft Lottery.

Twitter reactions did not disappoint after a to-be-determined play-in round loser - which reportedly had a 2.5% chance of winning - claimed the No. 1 overall pick, while the league-worst Detroit Red Wings fell to the fourth spot in the order:

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The winner of the 2020 Draft Lottery has yet to be determined.

One of the placeholder teams participating in the best-of-five qualifying round of the expanded 24-team playoff format will make the first overall selection at the 2020 NHL Draft.

Here's a look at the complete draft order from picks one through eight:

With a placeholder team winning the top selection, a second lottery will be conducted at some point between the end of the qualifiers and the first round of the 16-team playoffs to determine the final draft order. The eight teams eliminated from the play-in round will each get a 12.5% chance of securing the top pick in the second phase of the lottery.

"Team E" of the placeholder clubs won the top spot with odds of just 2.5%, which belongs to the 12-seed in lottery percentages, according to TSN's Bob McKenzie.

If the play-in round cannot be completed, the remaining bottom eight teams will get a one-in-eight shot at the top selection, according to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman.

The Ottawa Senators, who owned a combined 25% chance of landing the first overall selection between their two picks, will pick third and fifth. The Detroit Red Wings fell to No. 4 after holding an 18.5% chance of nabbing the top selection.

The Los Angeles Kings will select second for the first time since 2008, when they drafted blue-chip defenseman Drew Doughty.

Alexis Lafreniere - an electrifying winger from the Rimouski Oceanic of the QMJHL - is expected to be selected with the top pick. The 18-year-old tallied 35 goals while leading the league with 112 points in 52 games. His 2.15 point-per-game rate was the CHL's best since Connor McDavid scored at a 2.50 pace with the Erie Otters in 2014-15.

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2020 NHL Draft Lottery
When: Friday, June 26, 8 p.m. ET
How to watch: NHL Network, NBSCN, Sportsnet, TVAS

It's finally time for the NHL Draft Lottery.

Nearly everything about this year's lottery will be different. It's taking place months after it was originally supposed to. It will include eight unnamed teams as we await the results of the NHL's play-in rounds. It may have to be conducted in two phases depending on Friday's outcome. Some top prospects and executives will be available - virtually. Even the exact date of the actual draft is still unknown.

But as always, we do know one lucky team will eventually emerge with the No. 1 overall pick.

Let's explore everything you need to know heading into Friday's televised lottery draw.

Odds to win No. 1 pick

The Detroit Red Wings finished the abbreviated regular season with the worst record in the league and thus own the top individual odds of landing the first overall selection. The Ottawa Senators, however, own the San Jose Sharks' first-round pick, giving them the second- and third-best odds, and therefore the best chance to wind up picking first overall.

Though the Buffalo Sabres and New Jersey Devils finished the campaign tied in points percentage, the Devils have a better shot at landing the No. 1 selection by virtue of their inferior winning percentage in regulation and overtime.

Format

Fourteen teams are vying for the top picks of the draft. Eight of those teams are currently unidentified; they will be the clubs eliminated from the play-in rounds of the league's 24-team postseason.

Friday night's event is the first phase of the lottery. The eight losing teams from the play-in round will be represented in this phase as unassigned picks, as illustrated above. There will be three draws in Phase 1: The first will determine the team selecting No. 1, the second will decide the team selecting No. 2, and the third will set the team selecting No. 3.

If a team participating in the play-in round wins a top-three pick, a second lottery phase conducted at some point between the end of the qualifiers and the first round of the 16-team playoffs will determine the final draft order.

Should all three top picks go to teams in the bottom seven, a second phase won't be necessary. The remaining bottom-seven teams will be assigned picks No. 4-7 in inverse order of their regular-season points percentage, and picks No. 8-15 will be assigned to teams eliminated from the play-in round in inverse order of points percentage.

Projected top picks

There's not much uncertainty surrounding the No. 1 pick in this year's draft. But what happens after that is far from certain in what many are calling one of the deepest drafts in recent memory. Let's take a look at some of the top prospects expected to join the teams that win the lottery.

Alexis Lafreniere

The native of Quebec is the undisputed top pick of this year's draft. The dynamic winger has dominated the QMJHL with the Rimouski Oceanic over the past three seasons, and he's the only player besides Sidney Crosby to ever win back-to-back CHL Player of the Year awards.

Not only did Lafreniere bolster his case with 35 goals and 112 points in 55 games with Rimouski this season, but he also earned tournament MVP honors while helping Canada win gold at the 2020 world juniors.

Quinton Byfield

Byfield was once seen as a legitimate threat to challenge Lafreniere at No. 1. Although Lafreniere has since widened the gap, Byfield will be a significant prize for another lottery-winning team.

The big-bodied center is nearly a full year younger than Lafreniere, and his raw skills and physicality make him one of the most intriguing players of the class. He amassed 32 goals and 82 points in 45 games in just his second season with the OHL's Sudbury Wolves.

Tim Stuetzle

Playing in Germany's top professional league as a teenager is impressive. Dominating Germany's top professional league as a teenager is even better. Stuetzle, now 18, cracked the Mannheim Eagles' roster at 17 and never looked back.

The winger posted seven goals and 34 points in 41 games this season, showing he can keep up with more developed players. Stuetzle was a top-50 scorer in the league and enters the draft as the top international prospect.

Best of the rest

Anything can happen when the 2020 NHL Draft finally rolls around. With such a strong class, players could easily rise and fall unexpectedly.

The top two defensemen in this selection are Jamie Drysdale and Jake Sanderson. Forwards Cole Perfetti, Marco Rossi, Lucas Raymond, Alexander Holtz, and Jack Quinn round out the top 10 prospects.

Any of the aforementioned players - and many not named here - could become NHL stars, and teams picking at or near the top of the draft will have some tough decisions to make. The NHL's complete prospect rankings can be found here.

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Jesperi Kotkaniemi will take part in Montreal Canadiens training camp as a full participant and will be available to play if and when the campaign resumes, a team source told The Athletic's Arpon Basu.

The 19-year-old prospect was hospitalized after injuring his spleen during a game with AHL's Laval Rocket on March 6. He remained in hospital overnight for observation and sat out the club's final game on March 11 before the AHL season was postponed and ultimately canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier in June, Kotkaniemi underwent a scan in Finland that showed his spleen was fully healed, according to Basu. Kotkaniemi was cleared to participate in off-ice workouts in April, but he had yet to be given the green light to take contact.

Kotkaniemi collected six goals and two assists in 36 NHL games during the 2019-20 campaign before the Canadiens assigned him to Laval on Feb. 1. He registered 11 goals and 34 points in 79 contests during his rookie season in 2018-19.

The Canadiens drafted Kotkaniemi third overall in 2018.

Montreal will face the Pittsburgh Penguins in the play-in round as part of the league's 24-team return-to-play plan.

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The NHL could have its teams play daily tripleheaders in an attempt to accelerate the season upon its possible return.

"I was always told to prepare for tripleheaders - that that's the kind of thing we would be looking at, tripleheaders on a daily basis," Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman said Thursday on NHL Network.

He added: "I've been told that as it stands right now, the last possible day of the Stanley Cup Final is Oct. 5. So you can pretty much do the math, that's something like 66 days (from the end of July.)"

Friedman added that timing multiple games a day at the same rink may be complicated, especially if both hub cities are on the west coast.

It isn't yet known how the league will sanitize everything between games. Other potential hurdles include extended overtimes delaying other games.

"If we do go two western cities, that's going to be very interesting for TV how they do that," Friedman said. "In theory, you can play at 1:00, 4:00, and 7:00 every day locally, which is 4:00, 7:00, and 10:00 ET. But these are playoff games, what if we go to overtime? We talked about the cleaning that needs to be done between games, maybe that's not long enough a time between games.

"I was told to expect tripleheaders, I don't have any reason to believe that's different, but I'm not sure how much time they need in between all of these particular games."

The league is expected to initiate Phase 3 of its return-to-play plan on July 10, which would allow teams to begin full training camps. There is no date set yet for when the 24-team playoff will kick off.

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Every draft produces selections and storylines that, given time, become generational talking points or fade from view. Our writers are throwing it back a decade to tell some tales about the classes of 2010. The five-part series began with the NHL, detoured to MLB, the NBA, and the NFL, and now is back to the NHL for its finale.

It dawned on Brendan Gallagher at an early age - in Grade 1 or Grade 2, he's not exactly sure - that he might one day make the NHL. His school pals told him so, and he would relay those lofty dreams to his teacher.

At the same time, Gallagher says it didn't fully register that playing in the NHL was attainable until he took his first shift for the Montreal Canadiens in 2012. He'd never aspired to be the best player in his minor hockey loop, junior hockey league, or the AHL. He just put his head down and played.

"I've always had a short-term mentality," Gallagher, now 28 and more than 500 games into his NHL career, said in an interview.

"There was never a moment of comfort, I'll put it that way," he added. "It was always about what I had to do to improve."

This restless approach to playing hockey aligns with how June 26, 2010 - the second day of the NHL draft - unfolded inside the Gallagher household.

There was a solid chance Gallagher would get picked at some point, so he tuned in to the NHL Network broadcast. His mom Della and one of his two sisters were around, but there was no draft party in Tsawwassen, British Columbia. Gallagher's dad and brother were out of town for a hockey tournament, and Gallagher himself had a community event to attend with his teammates later.

Around lunchtime, the TV commentators stopped offering instant analysis as the late-round selections streamed in at a rapid pace. Instead, they began recapping the top 60 picks, which, for a draft hopeful, was poor programming. Luckily, a giant board in the background of the shot listed all the recent picks.

One name on the board looked awfully familiar from afar.

"Brendan! Did you get drafted by Florida!?" Della asked.

"I don't think so, Mom. I feel like I would know by now ..." her son replied.

Benjamin Gallacher had been picked by the Panthers in the fourth round, 93rd overall. Close, but not quite.

Mom and son shared a laugh, and Gallagher went back to scarfing down his lunch. That afternoon commitment - road hockey with excited local fans of the WHL's Vancouver Giants - wouldn't be waiting for the draft to end. Then the phone rang.

"I had a mouthful of Kraft Dinner when my agent called and told me I was about to get drafted to Montreal," Gallagher said. Minutes later, he was accepting congratulations from Canadiens brass after being selected in Round 5, 147th overall.

Ten years on, Gallagher's arguably the biggest steal of the 2010 draft class.

Among the 210 picks, Gallagher, ranks fifth in goals (173), 10th in points (334), and 10th in games (547). A feisty right winger with gaudy puck-possession numbers and an 'A' on his jersey, Gallagher's a two-time 30-goal scorer who consistently hovers around the 50-point mark. He's become one of the NHL's most reliable and effective players.

In theScore's recent redraft of the 2010 class, Gallagher went ninth overall, right after Ryan Johansen and right before Cam Fowler, who in the actual draft were chosen fourth and 12th, respectively. The Athletic earlier this week pegged Gallagher as the 14th-best pick of the salary-cap era (2005 to 2016, anyway) by using the advanced statistic Game Score Value Added as a performance measure. Vladimir Tarasenko, the 16th pick in 2010, was slotted ninth on The Athletic's list, while John Klingberg and Mark Stone - two other late-round gems at 131st and 178th overall - ranked 15th and 18th.

"Gally: Low maintenance, high return," Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin told reporters in late 2019. "Every night, every shift, you know what you're getting, and it's 150% every night, every shift. There's an expression that we use: He drags his teammates to the fight."

Gallagher doesn't play the game any differently now as a 5-foot-9 NHLer than he did as the 5-foot-3 teen drafted by the Giants in the ninth round of the 2007 WHL bantam draft. One of the shortest players on the ice his entire life, a first taste of success came as a tiny net-crasher who led his peewee squad to a provincial championship.

"I went up to get my gold medal and I got booed by the other team's crowd," Gallagher said, chuckling at the memory of accidentally injuring an opposing goalie en route to a B.C. title. "That was the first time I ever got booed, at 13, I think. It started early."

Gallagher notes he's had that edge, that trademark bite in his game, since the very beginning. You've surely seen it countless times, when he swarms the crease in an effort to will the puck past the goal line. The video footage below, taken at the 2002 Brick Invitational hockey tournament, provides historical evidence:

Scan yearly scouting reports on Gallagher and three things show up in every submission: He's a small guy who plays a big guy's game, he's determined to leave all of himself on the ice all the time, and he's coachable. The common threads aren't happy accidents, either. For as long as he can remember, Gallagher's been focused on accentuating his strengths.

If Gallagher devotes most of his time and energy on improving what he does well, the thinking goes, he'll never be bogged down by his limitations.

"When you talk about skill sets, I'm nowhere near the top of any category," Gallagher said. "I'm not the fastest guy, I don't have the best shot, none of that. But you can look back at my conditioning - how I've worked in the gym and off the ice - and point to the power I've developed. I can go up against anyone in the world, and that comes from work."

"I don't work on the things that Connor McDavid works on, because Connor McDavid is a more talented player than me," he added about his on-ice training. "I work on things that I'm going to be able to use on a nightly basis, whether it's puck protection or little skills in front of the net or quick little movements that create a little bit more time and space."

Producing offense has never been an issue for Gallagher. It was the eye test that failed him as a younger player. He was picked so late in the WHL draft because he was small and didn't skate or shoot particularly well. By 2009-10, his NHL draft year, he wasn't much bigger and was still scoring the bulk of his goals - 41 in 72 games to lead the Giants - through sheer will and determination versus skill.

According to Gallagher, the Canadiens were the lone club to express strong interest in him as the NHL draft neared. There were no guarantees. He was 63 picks away from going undrafted and heading to a development camp as a free agent.

"He's such a driven young man," Don Hay, Gallagher's junior coach, said. "I knew he'd find a way - whether it was in the weight room or on the ice - to work at his game so that he could one day have the opportunity to play in the National Hockey League." Over the course of the past 10 years, including eight in the NHL, Gallagher's won over any and all naysayers.

"Small size can be a disadvantage," Jaroslav (Yogi) Svejkovsky, Gallagher's longtime skills coach, said. "But I do believe, from Brendan's point of view, he's learned how to make it an advantage."

Gallagher's honed a low center of gravity through decades of customized off-ice training with his dad Ian, a renowned strength and conditioning coach who runs Delta Hockey Academy. Similar to Hall of Famer and childhood idol Martin St. Louis, Gallagher's robust lower body more or less eliminates any size discrepancies. For context, only three of the 20 NHL forwards currently listed at 69 inches are heavier than Gallagher. He's a truck at 184 pounds.

Combine that physical stability with a fearlessness that's become second nature, an uncanny grasp of the difference between being a pain in the ass and being a frequent visitor to the penalty box, and drastically improved wrist and snap shots, and you have an irritant who keeps defenders honest.

Hay and Svejkovsky relayed important advice to Gallagher during an end-of-season evaluation midway through his time with the Giants. "If you can add a shot that can be a threat from the outside, people have to start playing you tighter," Svejkovsky recalled saying. "Which is actually really good for you, Brendan, because you can expose them."

Of his student now, Svejkovsky said: "His understanding and awareness in small areas, and his determination, makes him so hard to play against. If you don't really know, as a defender, what to do - should I play him super hard and tight, or should I give him space? - that's valuable."

Gallagher's development is evident on a nightly basis. Montreal was a nightmare to contain when he was on the ice during the 2019-20 regular season. The heat maps below - the left shows the Habs' offense with Gallagher, the right without him - illustrate how comically impactful he was in 5-on-5 situations playing alongside Phillip Danault and Tomas Tatar.

A total of 390 NHL skaters logged 750 or more minutes at even strength in the regular season, according to Natural Stat Trick. Gallagher ranked second overall in both shot attempts for per 60 minutes and shots for per 60, sandwiched between linemates Tatar and Danault in both categories. He ranked second, again, this time behind draft classmate Stone, in scoring chances for per 60. And he sat atop the leaderboard in high-danger shot attempts for per 60.

The numbers show Gallagher and his linemates were relentless in the attacking zone. Despite often lining up against the opposition's most dangerous offensive players, they found a way to throw puck after puck towards the goalie.

"You want to make sure that these top guys are playing defense and playing in the defensive zone," Gallagher said of the trio's game plan. "You don't want them to have confidence and time with the puck. We'll know pretty quickly if we're having a good game by how much we're skating and how much possession time that we have. We try to simplify the game, and when we do that we know we're helping our team and improving our chances to win."

Gallagher, a 56% possession player over his career, finished seventh in the NHL in shots on goal per game (3.83). The six players ahead of him were Nathan MacKinnon, Alex Ovechkin, Max Pacioretty, Auston Matthews, David Pastrnak, and Patrick Kane. Gallagher's shot's come a long way, but it can't compete over a full year with that group of all-world snipers.

So Gallagher contributes to Montreal's success by gaining the inside track on defenders, keeping his stick on the ice, finding the soft spots in hard areas, and taking abuse from whoever's between him and the net.

"When he goes to the net, he stays to the net. He goes to the hard places and he doesn't move," Gerry Johannson, Gallagher's agent and president of The Sports Corporation, said. "A lot of guys go to the net and then drift away from it. But he'll go to the net and he'll stay there, and stay there, and stay there."

Montreal's drawn the Pittsburgh Penguins in the play-in round for the NHL's 24-team tournament aimed at completing the season this fall. Expect the same Gallagher you saw before competition stopped in March: self-aware, fearless, smart, and - above all - a pounding headache for defenders.

"If you can show up every night and do your job," Gallagher said, "it's 15 to 20 minutes of work. It's hard work, but if you're able to do that on a consistent, nightly basis, having the trust of your teammates goes a long way in feeling important to the team."

John Matisz is theScore's national hockey writer.

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