The first chance for bad teams to make this an awesome off-season has arrived.
The NHL Draft Lottery is set to go Tuesday night, so team execs will be clutching their rabbit’s foot while fate decides whether a franchise-altering player will land in their lap.
Eleven teams are eligible to win the first lottery draw, which determines who gets the top selection, with odds ranging from San Jose’s 18.5 per cent shot to the Buffalo Sabres’ three per cent hope.
An additional draw will be held to determine who picks second overall.
Remember, five non-playoff teams — Philadelphia, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Detroit and St. Louis — are in the draw without even a prayer of drafting first overall because a team can only move up 10 spots with a lottery win.
Therefore, as the last-place finisher, San Jose has a 25.5 per cent chance of winding up with pick No. 1 because even if it doesn’t cash on its 18.5 per cent shot to outright win the lottery, the Sharks will still select first if any of those five aforementioned clubs that can’t move up far enough to pick first end up having their ball pulled.
Finally, recall the league now limits how many lottery victories a team can have to two in a five-year period. Those parameters do not make any team ineligible to win the event this time out.
So, yes, it is possible the Chicago Blackhawks get lucky and win the right to pick top prospect Macklin Celebrini 12 months after selecting Connor Bedard.
The Hawks jumped two teams — Columbus and Anaheim — to snag Bedard last year and moved up four spots in 2007 to take franchise icon Patrick Kane with the first-overall pick.
At the other end of the good fortune spectrum, a couple of teams with some of the best odds to get their hands on Celebrini have never enjoyed the privilege of walking to the podium before every other team in the league.
Soon enough, some lucky GM and his staff will be high-fiving and back-slapping with the kind of force that leaves a mark. Until then, let’s take a look at the 11 squads who could yet wind up picking No. 1 overall on June 28 in Vegas.
San Jose Sharks: 25.5 per cent chance of drafting first
The Sharks have never picked first overall at the NHL Draft so how much would they love for that to change with a hometown talent, of sorts, primed to go No. 1?
Celebrini was a Bay Area resident for some formative years and played AAA hockey for the Jr. Sharks due to the fact his dad, Rick Celebrini, is the director of sports medicine and performance for the Golden State Warriors.
The Sharks really leaned into the full rebuild this year, dealing away Tomas Hertl at the deadline despite the fact he has a contract that runs through the rest of the decade. San Jose’s prospect pool already looks better than it did a year ago thanks to the fact that both its 2023 first-rounders — centre Will Smith at fourth overall and winger Quentin Musty at No. 26 — look like serious keepers.
Still, San Jose — which has picked second overall three times, but not since taking franchise icon Patrick Marleau there in 1997 — could desperately use a crown jewel to give this process definitive shape.
Taking Celebrini would certainly achieve that.
Chicago Blackhawks: 13.5 per cent
A 1-2 down the middle of Bedard and Celebrini — both originally North Vancouver products — would immediately make Chicago one of the most compelling teams in the league. If the Hawks do win the top pick, they would become the first team to draft first overall in consecutive years since Edmonton took Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Nail Yakupov in the top slots from 2010 through 2012.
No disrespect to those players, but winning Bedard and Celebrini in back-to-back years would be on a whole other level.
Anaheim Ducks: 11.5 per cent
Last year, the Ducks had the second-best odds to select a generational player in Bedard and were jumped by the Blackhawks. And next year will be the 20-year anniversary of Anaheim coming down to the wire with the Pittsburgh Penguins for the No. 1 pick in the 2005 lottery, only to slot in at No. 2 and see Sidney Crosby head to Steeltown.
Will Orange County finally have its draft day in the sun?
The Ducks have never selected first overall and doing so this year would allow the squad to add Celebrini to an already impressive young crew up front that includes the No. 2 pick from 2023, Leo Carlsson.
Columbus Blue Jackets: 9.5 per cent
Hear us out. If the Blue Jackets fall back to fifth or six overall, could we see the rare instance of a team putting a pick that high in play ahead of the draft?
The Blue Jackets selected Adam Fantilli last year at No. 3, giving them a foundational piece in place up the middle. Surely they’d love to add Celebrini to the mix. But as a team that has not actively been trying to rebuild, could the Blue Jackets — who will be led by a new GM at some point in the near future — try to flip their pick for immediate returns if they are drafting somewhere outside the top two spots?
Montreal Canadiens: 8.5 per cent
The Canadiens drafted first overall two years ago and the decision to take Juraj Slafkovsky there in 2022 has started to look like a good one.
You could say the Habs don’t deserve another No. 1 selection just 24 months after already having it, but the real key to a rebuild is getting that coveted selection when a true franchise-altering talent — ideally at a premium position — is available.
Celebrini fits that definition and any concerns over Montreal’s rebuild lacking elite talent would evaporate with a lottery win Tuesday night.
Utah: 7.5 per cent
Could. You. Imagine?
Players always talk about their “Welcome to the NHL” moment. A lottery win for Utah would be the all-time version of that for an entire franchise.
This organization built up an absurd amount of draft capital as the Arizona Coyotes and has a number of good young players already on the roster and more about to arrive in the form of quality prospects.
What if it added Celebrini at the draft, then went out and chased some high-end free agents?
The Coyotes have never picked higher than third overall and, before moving to the desert, the Jets 1.0 went one-for-one picking first overall by snagging Dale Hawerchuk there in 1981.
Ottawa Senators: 6.5 per cent
The Sens’ history with the first overall pick is… not great.
In 1993, Ottawa selected Alexandre Daigle, who probably never stood a real chance of living up to the outrageous expectations placed upon him as a major junior prospect. Chris Pronger was the second player taken that year.
Two years later, the Sens took Bryan Berard in the top spot and the hotshot defenceman asked for a trade from Ottawa when the team sent him back to junior following his first training camp. About seven months after drafting him, Ottawa sent Berard to the New York Islanders for a return that included the second-overall pick in 1995, Wade Redden.
Ottawa did get a key piece in Chris Phillips at the top of the 1996 board, but you’d ideally like to get more than a no-nonsense defenceman with the No. 1 pick.
It’s now been nearly 30 years since Ottawa selected first overall and a lottery win would go a long way toward improving the crummy vibes in Canada’s capital.
Seattle Kraken: 6 per cent
Matty Beniers — the second-overall pick in 2021 and the 2023 NHL rookie of the year — is surely a better player than the guy we just witnessed go through a sophomore slump. Still, if Seattle could land Celebrini and ultimately turn Beniers into a fantastic No. 2 centre — and possibly convert Shane Wright into a top-six winger — the still-fledgling Kraken would take on an entirely different look as a franchise.
Calgary Flames: 5 per cent
You know every year we get that photo of the top three picks holding up a finger/fingers to represent where they were selected? Ever notice how none of those guys are ever wearing a Flames sweater?
Yep. Calgary is creeping up on 45 years as an NHL franchise in Southern Alberta and the team has never made a top-three selection in the draft. Even as the Atlanta Flames in the 1970s, the closest the squad got to No. 1 was picking second overall on two occasions.
Those facts alone make it easy to wish good luck upon the Flames, to say nothing of the anguish GM Craig Conroy endured this year having to deal away so many pending UFAs as Calgary tries to rebuild on the fly.
New Jersey Devils: 3.5 per cent
New Jersey already has two first-overall selections in Nico Hischier (2017) and Jack Hughes (2019) anchoring its top two centre slots. It would be legit mind-blowing if the Devils won this year’s lottery and added Celebrini to their roster, presumably as a winger because the guys they have at centre would seem to be entrenched there.
If New Jersey wins the lottery we could quite conceivably see the rare instance where a No. 1 pick is taken by a squad and participates in the Stanley Cup Playoffs 10 months later. It happened in 2017, when the Toronto Maple Leafs made the playoffs in Auston Matthews’ rookie year and also occurred when freshman Nathan MacKinnon helped the Colorado Avalanche into the 2014 post-season. Before that, you have to go back to 1987’s top pick, Pierre Turgeon, playing in the 1988 playoffs with the Buffalo Sabres.
Buffalo Sabres: 3 per cent
The Sabres obviously have two No. 1 overall defencemen on their roster in Rasmus Dahlin (2018) and Owen Power (2021). None of their forward prospects have quite that pedigree, but Buffalo’s pipeline certainly already boasts its share of intriguing offensive talent.
Adding Celebrini to that crew might just be enough to get Western New Yorkers to drop their guard and start believing in their hockey club again.
