Tonight at 7 p.m., the Blues will find out if there was any silver lining in their second-half collapse. The NHL will hold its annual draft lottery in New York and it will be televised live on Versus.

Of course, the Blues would rather be opening the first round of the NHL playoffs Wednesday, but they weren’t nearly good enough in the second half and therefore their season came to an end Sunday with a 4-1 win over Columbus.

The Blues finished with a record of 33-36-13 for 79 points, which was the fourth-fewest points in the NHL this season. That means the club will have a 10.7 percent chance of winning tonight’s lottery and thus picking No. 1 overall in June.

Here’s the breakdown of the 14 teams in the lottery and their chances of winning:

1. Tampa Bay Lightning (25%)
2. Los Angeles Kings (18.8%)
3. Atlanta Thrashers (14.2%)
4. St. Louis Blues (10.7%)

5.  New York Islanders (8.1%)
6. Columbus Blue Jackets (6.2%)
7. Toronto Maple Leafs (4.7%)
8. Phoenix Coyotes (3.6%)
9. Nashville Predators via Florida (2.7%)
10. Vancouver Canucks (2.1%)
11. Chicago Blackhawks (1.5%)
12. Anaheim Ducks via Edmonton (1.1%) 
13. Buffalo Sabres (0.8%)
14. Carolina Hurricanes (0.5%)

This is the way the draft lottery works: NHL officials will draw four numbers. The combination order of those four numbers drawn determines who wins the lottery.

For example, let’s hypothetically say the numbers 2-7-3-9 pop up tonight. NHL officials will look at their chart and see that that combination belongs to the Atlanta Thrashers. Therefore, Atlanta would climb from No. 3 to No. 1 and have the first pick in the draft.

The way the percentages work is that 25 percent of the combinations belong to Tampa Bay, 18. 8 percent to the LA Kings, 14.2 percent to Atlanta, 10.7 percent to the Blues and so on . . .

The most spots a team can move up in the draft lottery is four and the most any team can fall back is one spot. That means only the top five teams in the draft lottery have a shot of ascending to No. 1 tonight.

Let’s say that Carolina somehow wins with its 0.5 percent chance . . . the highest the Hurricanes can move up is No. 10. The top nine picks would stay in the same order, Carolina would go to No. 10 and teams 10-13 would fall back one spot.

That’s all it is . . . one combination of four numbers will determine the entire draft order for the first 14 teams.

So the Blues will be picking either No. 1 (if they win the lottery), No. 4 (if any team 1-3 or 9-14 wins the lottery) or No. 5 (if any team 5-8 wins the lottery).

The NHL has held this type of draft lottery system in seven of the last eight years. The only year it was different in 2005, when the league was coming out of the lockout. There were no standings from the previous season to base the lottery on , so the NHL devised a unique system in which every team had a shot at the No. 1 pick. Pittsburgh won it and selected Sidney Crosby in a no-brainer decision.

So throw out the 2005 draft lottery. In the other seven years, the team with the best odds of winning the lottery won just twice time: the Blues in 2006 and the Florida Panthers in 2002.

In those seven years . . . 

- The team with the 2nd-best odds has never won the lottery.

- The team with the 3rd-best odds has won two times.

- The team with the 4th-best odds has won once.

- The team with the 5th-best odds has won twice.

Here’s what happened in those years . . .

In 2007: Chicago moves up from No. 5 to No. 1 and selects Patrick Kane.

In 2006: The Blues win the lottery and retain the No. 1 pick, selecting Erik Johnson.

Other notable picks that year: Jordan Staal (No. 2), Jonathan Toews (No. 3), Nicklas Backstrom (No. 4), Peter Mueller (No. 8).

2005: Pittsburgh wins special lotto and takes Crosby.

Other notable picks that year: Jack Johnson (No. 3), Carey Price (No. 5), Anze Kopitar (No. 11).

2004: Washington moves from No. 3 to No. 1 and selects Alex Ovechkin No. 1.

Other notable picks that year: Evgeni Malkin (No. 2).

* That year, the team that got the short end of the stick was Chicago, which had the second-best odds of winning the draft (18.8%). Instead, Washington won and moved up from No. 3 to No. 1 and got Ovechkin. Pittsburgh, with the best odds of winning the draft (25%), fell to No. 2 and took Malkin. Chicago dropped to No. 3 and took defensemen Cam Barker. OUCH!

2003: Pittsburgh moves from No. 4 to No. 1 and selects goalie Marc-Andre Fleury.

Other notable picks that year: Eric Staal (No. 2), Thomas Vanek (No. 5) and Dion Phaneuf (No. 9)

*Perhaps moving up to No. 1 overall didn’t help the Penguins after all!

2002: Florida won the lottery and retained the No. 1 pick. However, the Panthers made a trade with Columbus, sending the No. 1 pick to the Blue Jackets, who took Rick Nash with the selection. Florida then took Jay Bouwmeester at No. 3 . . . OUCH!

2001: Atlanta moves from No. 3 to No. 1 and selects winger Ilya Kovalchuk.

Other notables that year: Jason Spezza (No. 2). This is another draft where moving up was huge. After Kovalchuk and Spezza were taken, Tampa Bay picked third and took Alexander Svitov. That’s who Atlanta would have been left with, but instead they got an All-Star in Kovalchuk.

2000: New York Islanders move from No. 5 to No. 1 and select Rick DiPietro.

Other notable picks that year: Dany Heatley (No. 2) and Marian Gaborik (No. 3). If you had to guess right now which one of the those players deserves a 15-year contract, who would it be?

So how will history write itself tonight? Tune in at 7.
JR