The annual entry draft takes place prior to the pre-season, and marks the official start to the SICHL season as the first league-wide activity in which all General Managers participate.
A list of eligible players will be made available before the draft. Any player drafted in the most recent National Hockey League Entry Draft, and any player from the previous National Hockey League Entry Draft that went undrafted in the previous SICHL Entry Draft is eligible for the SICHL Entry Draft.
Draft order in the Entry Draft is determined by a combination of lottery and regular season standing. In all cases, the team considered is the original holder of the draft pick, not the team which may have acquired the pick via trade.
At the conclusion of the regular season, the 8 SICHL teams not qualifying for the playoffs are entered in a weighted lottery to determine the draft order in the first round. The 24th-place team has a 25% chance of winning the lottery, with odds diminishing to a 0.5% chance for the 17th-place team. A single selection from the lottery pool is made, with the winning team eligible to improve its draft order by up to four places, and no team eligible to drop more than one place. Therefore, only the 20th-through 24th-place teams are eligible to receive the first overall pick.