Everyone wants to win the NHL Draft Lottery, but ultimately only one team can.
The Blackhawks fell from the second-best odds to the third spot overall in the NHL Draft, earning the chance to draft a top-three ranked player to join their team.
Mark Lazerus of The Athletic revealed why he thinks the Blackhawks not winning the draft lottery might have realistically been in their favor.
“I really believe the No. 2 pick is the Blackhawks’ best-case scenario. Avoid the whole conversation about picking another defenseman (they shouldn’t!) and take Misa, the guy they most need. BPA makes sense in theory, but we’re past that point. Get Bedard some help.” Lazerus said via X formerly known as Twitter.
They didn’t get the second pick, but will be able to avoid any question of whether they should draft a defenseman to join their already loaded defensive core.
“Third overall, we’re going to get a great player,” General Manager Kyle Davidson said to Scott Powers of The Athletic. “I’m excited to head into meetings next week with our amateur group and start the process of nailing down where we want to line up the board and what it looks like. I think we stayed in a good range where I think we’re going to be really excited with what we end up with.”
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The first round of the NHL Draft is held on June 27.
“The thing about the draft is there’s always a lot of public discourse and then I feel like there’s always those people who suggest their surprise picks,” Davidson said. “That’s just people seeing the board differently. That’s what makes the draft exciting. Everyone has different opinions, different thoughts on what makes players successful. And so, I think ours versus against any other team’s is going to be different and is going to be different from public. It’s exciting to get behind the curtain and really hammer away at what those tiers are, as you call it, or the rankings are for the Blackhawks and what our staff believes and how we see things lining up. Excited to do that, but we’re not quite at that point yet.”
