Imagine what it must have felt like to be a Detroit Red Wings fan watching the NHL draft lottery on Tuesday night. For 10 long years, you’ve been watching your team methodically and painfully and endlessly rebuild itself through the draft, yet never pick higher than No. 4. And even that only happened once. It’s been a parade of sixths, of eighths, of ninths. Every spring, picking in the realm of the maybe, the hopefully, the possibly. Never the sure things. Never the generational talents.
And then you see the Toronto Maple Leafs leap up from No. 5 to No. 1, and the San Jose Sharks jump from No. 9 to No. 2. The ping pong balls, like the hockey gods, can be cruel.
At least the Leafs are in the throes of a rebuild, or a retool, or whatever new general manager John Chayka decides to call it. Toronto was awful this season; San Jose was not. The Sharks were exciting. The Sharks were fun. The Sharks were in the playoff race up until the last week of the season. The Sharks already had skipped a step or two in the typical rebuilding process, thanks largely to the magic of 2024 No. 1 pick Macklin Celebrini. Now they might skip straight into contention.
San Jose will draft in the top two for the third straight year, something that hasn’t happened since the Edmonton Oilers picked first three straight times from 2010-12, selecting Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Nail Yakupov. After taking Celebrini at No. 1 in 2024 and Michael Misa at No. 2 in 2025, the Sharks will pick second on June 26. Throw in No. 4 pick Will Smith in 2023, and it’s not hard to see why the Sharks have gotten so competitive in a hurry. This season, they missed the playoffs by four points.
“It’s very exciting, but it’s a little wild and unexpected to get the bounces of the balls that we’ve been able to,” Sharks general manager Mike Grier told reporters in a post-lottery interview. “Fortunate to have things play out the way they have. It’s been a lot of pain for the fans here to go through this, a lot of losing here at The Tank over the last couple years. It got better this year, but the fan base has been through a lot. I’m just excited for them that we’re hopefully trending in the right direction.”
Just how lucky have the Sharks been? An analysis of every draft pick from 2000-19 by The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn shows that the value of a first-round pick drops by roughly half after just a few picks. A top-three pick is far more likely to jump right into the NHL, and far more likely to be a star. Last year’s top three picks — Matthew Schaefer, Misa and Anton Frondell — combined for 89 points in 139 games. Picks No. 4 through No. 10 played in a combined 14 games. The top three picks in the 2024 draft have 268 points in 320 games; picks No. 4 through No. 10 have 29 points in 192 games. And the top three picks in the 2023 draft have 484 points in 633 games; picks No. 4 through No. 10 have 294 points in 519 games. There are no sure things in the NHL Draft, but picking in the top three is as close as you can get.
Of course, there are plenty of really good No. 9 picks in recent NHL history — Dougie Hamilton, Bo Horvat, Nik Ehlers, Timo Meier, Mikhail Sergachev, Dylan Guenther, to name a few. But there are also plenty of names like Nate Danielson (Detroit, 2023), Matthew Savoie (Buffalo, 2022), Vitali Kravtsov (Rangers, 2018), who have yet to make a major impact. Even the good ones are largely complementary pieces, not superstars, certainly not generational. So for the Sharks to get another top-two pick instead of the No. 9, No. 10 or No. 11, is a massive opportunity to supercharge their rebuild.
“Where we were picking, if it was nine or two, we thought we were going to get a good young player to add to our core,” Grier said. “With the second pick, you’ve got a chance to add more high-end talent to the core, so that’s exciting.”
The Sharks are a particularly intriguing team to land the second pick. Assuming the Leafs take Penn State winger Gavin McKenna, San Jose can set the stage for the rest of the draft at No. 2. And because of their embarrassment of riches — The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler ranked their prospect pool the second-best in the NHL behind only Chicago’s — they have plenty of options.
The safest play is to go with the (nearly) consensus second-best player in the draft, Swedish winger Ivar Stenberg. Stenberg has been holding his own against men in the Swedish league for two years now, posting 11 goals and 22 assists in 43 games with Frolunda this past season. He could jump right into a top-line role alongside Celebrini and Smith, creating a super-line for years to come. Or he could slot in next to Misa on the second line, giving the Sharks two highly dangerous lines.
Grier has seen plenty of both McKenna and Stenberg, and likes them both.
“Dynamic with the puck. They’re both shoot/pass threats, which is not always the case with young players,” he said. “But there’s playmaking and vision on both of them. They think the game well and at a high level and are a threat to create scoring chances every shift. Very talented players and they’re exciting.”
But the Sharks are pretty loaded up front. Besides Celebrini, Misa and Smith, they have William Eklund, the No. 7 pick in 2021, and promising 20-year-old winger Igor Chernyshov. Grier also traded for and extended the contract of veteran winger Kiefer Sherwood last season for some depth scoring. You can never have enough goal-scorers, but it’s not as if winger is a huge position of need in San Jose. And with 23-year-old Jaroslav Askarov in net and 19-year-old Joshua Ravensbergen waiting in the wings, they’re pretty well set at goalie, too.
So might Grier shake up the draft and pick a defenseman? Vancouver, which dropped from No. 1 to No. 3 in the lottery and covets a center such as Caleb Malhotra, and Chicago, which dropped from No. 2 to No. 4 and is desperate for a winger such as Stenberg to play with Connor Bedard, certainly hope so. While McKenna and Stenberg are at the top of most scouting lists, this is a defense-heavy top 10.
And the Sharks need defensemen. Sam Dickinson, the No. 11 pick in 2024, had a solid rookie season in San Jose, with 14 points in 72 games. Eric Pohlkamp and Luca Cagnoni are intriguing prospects, but hardly can’t-miss. And the rest of the blue line is loaded with stopgap veterans such as Dmitry Orlov, John Klingberg, Nick Leddy and Mario Ferraro.
So perhaps Prince George’s Carson Carels, Sault Ste. Marie’s Chase Reid or the University of North Dakota’s Keaton Verhoeff fits their needs better. Typically a team bad enough to pick second just focuses on the best player available, but San Jose is well into its talent-hoarding phase and perhaps could be a little, well, pickier.
“There’s another, whatever it is, six weeks before the draft, so we’ll dig into it,” Grier said. “When you’re picking at the top of the draft, you always try and go with the best player available. I don’t think we’re going to pass — if there’s a big gap between two players or two positions — we’re not going to take a player just for need in that situation. We’ve got to do our homework, dig into it, and most likely we’ll take who we feel is the best fit and the best available.”
Then there’s the most tantalizing possibility of all — a trade. This offseason is shaping up to be something unlike we’ve ever seen before, as the rising salary cap has all but killed free agency. The top pending unrestricted free agents are defenseman Darren Raddysh, who had a monster breakout season at age 30 with the Lightning, and a bunch of older veterans such as Alex Tuch, John Carlson and Anthony Mantha. With so many teams looking to add this summer, it opens the door to some blockbuster trades. If Dallas’ Jim Nill is wary of giving RFA Jason Robertson a cap hit similar to Mikko Rantanen’s $12-million one, would he be willing to part with a 26-year-old three-time 40-goal scorer for the No. 2 pick, a chance to replenish his prospect pool after years of win-now trades? Are St. Louis’ Robert Thomas or Toronto’s Matthew Knies really available? Could Edmonton’s Darnell Nurse be had?
Or maybe the Blackhawks covet Stenberg enough to package the No. 4 pick with one of their three 2027 first-rounders in order to move up to No. 2. Trades like that happen all the time in the NFL, particularly when a team needs a quarterback, but they’re a lot less common in the NHL. Maybe the dearth of game-changing free agents will alter that mindset.
Keep in mind, San Jose also has Edmonton’s first-round pick this year. A lot can happen with that much draft capital.
“I don’t know if (moving up to No. 2) makes (a trade) unlikely, but it’s obviously a different price tag trading the ninth pick, what you might be asking for, or (moving) the second pick, what your ask would be,” Grier said. “That’s probably the part of the equation that changes. We’ll see. We’ll see if anything comes our way, but I’m open to listening.”
In a league with a handful of great teams, a handful of full-blown rebuilds and a whole mess of teams trying to figure out just what they are and just what their path forward is, the Sharks already were in an enviable position. They have a generational talent leading the way in Celebrini and a host of other young talented players. Now the No. 2 pick has fallen in their lap. They were maybe the last team in the lottery that needed a top-two pick, but they’re certainly happy to have it.
“There’s no secret here,” Grier said when asked if he had a good-luck charm. “I wish there was a good story behind it. But we’re just very fortunate and lucky that things have gone our way to be able to pick at the top of the draft here. Happy to have the balls bounce our way.”