Montreal Canadiens
Canadiens Potential Draft Lottery Outcomes, 3rd Overall Possible?
The NHL Draft Lottery is less than three weeks away, and the Montreal Canadiens are hoping to get lucky for the second year in a row.
By virtue of finishing 28th overall in the NHL standings, the Canadiens have the fifth-best odds for the 2023 NHL Draft Lottery on May 8.
Since last season, there are now two lotteries, rather than three, that allow teams to either claim the 1st or 2nd overall picks, or improve their drank rank by up to 10 spots.
By virtue of having the fifth-best odds, the Canadiens have a guaranteed top-7 pick in the coveted 2023 NHL Draft locked down, and simply need the lottery balls to drop to determine their fate.
There are a few ways the Montreal Canadiens’ lottery outcome could go, and it’s not as simple as you may think.
1st Overall
This is as cut-and-dry as you could expect.
If the Canadiens win the lottery for the 1st overall selection, they would climb four spots to select Connor Bedard at No. 1 and essentially put a jetpack on their ongoing rebuild.
As it stands right now, the Habs have an 8.5% chance of winning the top prize in the lottery, which is far less than the 25.5% they had last year by virtue of finishing 32nd overall in 2021-2022.
2nd Overall
Just like the 1st overall selection, if the Montreal Canadiens were to win the second lottery after a team ranked 1 to 11 wins the first lottery, then they would be awarded the 2nd overall pick.
The Canadiens have an 8.6% chance of being able to leapfrog the Columbus Blue Jackets, Chicago Blackhawks and San Jose Sharks for the coveted pick.
However, if a team ranked 12 to 16 wins the first lottery, a very unique outcome could unfold.
3rd Overall
In the very minute chance that the Ottawa Senators, currently owning the 12th best odds in the NHL Draft Lottery, were to win the first lottery, they would only be able to move up 10 spots, per NHL ruling.
In this scenario, the Anaheim Ducks, who finished 32nd overall, would automatically be awarded the 1st overall pick, Ottawa would be given the 2nd overall pick, and the winner of the second lottery would be awarded the 3rd overall pick in consequence.
There’s a 0.3% chance that such an outcome could come to pass, but it remains a possibility for the Canadiens, should the stars align.
5th Overall
If the Canadiens are moderately lucky and don’t have any of their rivals ranked 6th to 15th leapfrog over them by way of a lottery win, they would retain their current spot and select at the coveted 5th overall rank.
The Canadiens have a 24.5% chance of staying put after May 8 and walking into Nashville with a top-5 pick.
6th Overall
Of all the scenarios, the Canadiens falling back a spot to select at 6th overall is the most likely of them all.
With a 44.5% chance of getting leapfrogged by a team trailing behind them, the Canadiens could slide from 5 to 6.
7th Overall
The least attractive scenario of all could see the Montreal Canadiens slide two spots to the 7th overall rank.
Luckily, the Canadiens have higher odds of winning one of the two lotteries (17.4%) then they do of sliding down a couple of spots (14.2%), but it remains a real possibility that has occurred in the past.
Where do you see the Montreal Canadiens landing on May 8th? Let us know!
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im wondering if its possible to make it more confusing?
Why cant they make it a simple lottery ,balls in the machine ,everyone watches and sees directly, who wins the lottery?
If Ottawa or another team like Detroit or Buffalo win the lottery, good luck making it out of our division in the playoffs for the next decade.
I’ve been doing the Tankathon lottery simulator all season long with teams in all sorts of positions. The team that won the lottery the most often regardless of where they were in the standings was the San Jose Sharks. The scary part is recently Detroit has been winning it a fair amount of the time when I test it out and so has Washington oddly enough. If we don’t land Bedard, he HAS to end up on the west coast so we don’t have to face him very often. If he ends up on a rival Atlantic division team, we’re doomed.
I wouldn’t say that, buddy. McJesus was drafted how many years ago, and FINALLY EDM is a legit shot to get to the cup. It only took 8 years! Marner and Matthews on TOR have been together for 7 years, and they haven’t gotten out of the first round yet.
Landing Bedard does not guarantee anything…he’s just one player.
Its NOT the end-all-be-all if we don’t get Bedard AND he goes to a division rival. The ONLY division rival he can go to is indeed Detroit; Phil and Wash are in the other east division.
I know I’m going to get hammered for this, but I for one don’t think we NEED Bedard. I’m actually hoping we get a high end left winger (like Benson), a high end RDman (like Rinebacher), and we offer-sheet PLD away from Winny and give them a 1st and a 3rd in next years draft. We get all three of these, then other teams in our division will be saying “oh crap”…
Ya, I think we’ll have to disagree on that one. Tampa has Vasilevskiy, Stamkos, Point, Kucherov & Hedman. Toronto has Matthews, Marner, Nylander & Tavares. Buffalo has Dahlin, Power, Cozens & more. Detroit has Seider, Raymond, Edvinsson and Cossa. We need Bedard to compete and be better than our division rivals. If we don’t get him, it’ll be that much harder just to make the playoffs. With Bedard, the rebuild gets a MASSIVE boost. If he goes to one of our rivals with the foundations they already have, it’s going to be nearly impossible to get past them in the playoffs.
Tampa is getting old soon, and the Leafs still can’t figure it out in the playoffs. In the division, only Detroit has a chance of getting Bedard, and frankly, that does not turn them into unbeatables if they get him. Was the same thing with McJesus in EDM for a few years.
I’m not concerned if we don’t get him.
Think about this: If the just following 5 Habs players never got injured this season, Habs would have had 80 something pts – right behind Buff:
Cole
Dach
Monahan
Guhle
Matheson
We are NOT that bad.
And the rebuild gets a MASSIVE boast if we get Benson and Rinebacher and PLD in one shot…I’ll def take that!
See this link:
https://www.tankathon.com/nhl/pick_odds
It shows Lottery Possibilities very easily.
Yes, but how do we improve our “drank rank”? That’s what we really want to know! LOL
FWIW the habs dont have higher odds of a lottery win than sliding back to 7th. They are two separate lotteries so the chance of winning remains in the 8% range, you cant add them to get 17.4