No team is anticipating the NHL Draft Lottery more than the Vancouver Canucks this year.
Poised to enter the lottery with the best odds of landing the first overall pick, the Canucks are hoping that luck is finally on their side.
The date of the NHL Draft Lottery is now set for May 5, according to a report from Frank Seravalli of Hockey 24/7. The start time for the televised event has yet to be revealed.
If the Canucks finish dead-last as expected, they’ll have a 43.7 per cent chance at winning a top-two pick. Their odds of picking first would be 25.1 per cent, while their odds of selecting second would be set at 18.6 per cent.
Teams can drop a maximum of two spots, meaning the last-place team is guaranteed to pick no later than third.
The odds are in Vancouver’s favour this year (Tankathon.com)
The Canucks have not held a top-three pick since drafting Daniel and Henrik Sedin with the second and third picks in 1999. Vancouver has never picked first overall at the draft since entering the NHL 56 years ago.
Gavin McKenna remains the player most people expect to be picked first overall, though the native of Whitehorse, Yukon is not a shoo-in. Swedish winger Ivar Stenberg and Canadian defenceman Keaton Verhoeff round out the consensus top-three picks.
If the Canucks get lucky in the lottery, it’ll be a first for the franchise.
Vancouver famously dropped in the draft lottery in four consecutive years between 2016 and 2019. The Canucks had the third-best odds of winning the lottery in 2016 and the second-best odds in 2017, but picked fifth each year. Instead of drafting sixth in 2018, they slipped to seventh. And instead of picking ninth in 2019, they picked 10th.
The Canucks also lost a high-stakes lottery when they entered the league in 1970, as their expansion cousins, the Buffalo Sabres, got to pick future Hall of Famer Gilbert Perreault.
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