NHL Sour Rankings: What A Lottery Win Would Mean For The NHL’s Basement Dwellers

We’ve reached the end of the regular season, which means we know exactly who is going to be in the NHL playoffs and, more importantly for the context of this exercise, who is going to be in the draft lottery.

The NHL Sour Rankings make their final appearance of the 2025-26 NHL season as we look at the bottom of the NHL standings. 

It’s been a unique year in the league, with the changing of the guard being the theme of things. Teams like the Florida Panthers, Winnipeg Jets, and Toronto Maple Leafs fell off a cliff for various reasons, and they’ll be hoping for lottery luck. On the flip side, we’ve seen the Buffalo Sabres, Utah Mammoth, and Anaheim Ducks play well above expectations and lock down playoff spots. 

The NHL draft lottery is set for May 5, where we will see how the balls fall and which team will have the opportunity to draft first overall. It’s an opportunity for some teams to start their rebuild with a massive piece that they can build around.

It’s also a chance for some teams that have been contenders in recent years to add a young piece that could help them bounce back to the level they have come to expect. 

Let’s take a look at the teams in the lottery and what a lottery win would mean for the future of their franchise. 

Whether Vancouver ends up drafting first, second, or third overall, they are going to be taking the steps toward a new era of Canucks hockey. Ideally, they win one of the lotteries and have the chance to take Gavin McKenna or Ivar Stenberg. That would give them a chance to start their rebuild with the centerpiece to build around.

The real question is whether they want to swing for McKenna's elite skill or Stenberg's all-around impact. 

Despite finishing right near the bottom of the league once again, the Chicago Blackhawks showed so much more promise this year than last.

Connor Bedard took a big step this year and, had he not suffered an injury, would have been discussed as an elite player in the league, similarly to Macklin Celebrini. He was on pace for 116 points prior to the injury.

Along with Bedard, there were promising performances from Frank Nazar, Artyom Levshunov, Nick Lardis, and the fantastic late-season arrival of Anton Frondell. Winning the lottery could give them the one final piece to take the step that we’ve seen from the Sharks or other young, developing teams. 

The rebuild in Calgary was fully committed to this season with the trades of Nazem Kadri and MacKenzie Weegar, among others. They’ve brought in some of their young players like Zayne Parekh, Matvei Gridin, and Hunter Brzustewicz.

This team will be built around netminder Dustin Wolf and those young players. The missing component is the top-end, elite-level player. They don’t have one in the system, so winning the lottery and getting the chance to add one would be a massive win for the franchise. 

The New York Rangers feel like a team that could be a complete wildcard if granted the opportunity to draft first overall via a lottery win. They are in desperate need of a reset, but they have plenty of veteran players; however, the culture in the room seems to be out of sorts.

They also have plenty of young, intriguing players who have made a case to be fixtures in the lineup heading into next season. Whoever the Rangers draft with their first-round pick will be viewed as a potential new start for the franchise, but they have plenty of work to do around them. 

The Leafs don’t even need to win the lottery to come away from it as winners. As long as no one behind them in the standings ends up winning the lottery, the Leafs will get to keep their first-round pick. Currently, they have a 41.8 percent chance of keeping their pick. 

Sitting in fifth last with a top-five protected pick, Toronto is going to have an incredible amount of anxiety heading into lottery day. If they were to win the lottery, they seem like one of a few teams that would be a perfect fit for a player like McKenna, who could bring his elite playmaking to a line with Autson Matthews.

On the flip side, Florida (or someone else behind them) winning the lottery would mean that the Boston Bruins would get Toronto’s first-round pick, and historically, that’s always been entertaining. 

With changes in the front office and another year where the Seattle Kraken limp to the end of the season, this off-season will be an opportunity to start over a bit. With the expansion franchise set to enter year six, having only surpassed 35 wins in a season once, the expectation is that the Kraken can get things on track with a fresh perspective in the front office.

Winning the lottery would be a chance for the Kraken to add a centerpiece for the franchise, an aspect they haven’t quite had to this point. 

After a hot stretch of play after the Olympic break, the Jets briefly found themselves with an outside shot at the playoffs. A regression back to the underwhelming level of play toward the end of the season killed those chances, though, and the Jets are back in the lottery, just not quite in as favorable a position as they were earlier in the year.

The Jets, like the Maple Leafs, seem to be at a point where they could reasonably open up one more window of contention with the current core, as long as they make some shrewd moves around the edges. Adding a key piece by winning the lottery could potentially extend that window even further. 

The Florida Panthers winning the lottery would be almost cruel to the rest of the NHL, but being cruel to the rest of the NHL is why they are back-to-back Stanley Cup Champions.

Although they missed the post-season this year because of a wide array of key injuries, this Panthers’ squad is expected to be back as contenders next season, and if they were to add a McKenna or Stenberg, that would be cruel. Just the way they’d like it. 

The Sharks have built a solid core, and they took a big step this season, finding themselves in the playoff picture until the very end, when the team seemed to run out of gas.

They already have their franchise player in Macklin Celebrini, who became the sixth teenager to eclipse the 100-point mark in NHL history. He has plenty of young talent around him in San Jose with Will Smith, Michael Misa, Sam Dickinson, and Igor Chernyshov headlining the support cast.

If San Jose were to win the lottery and find themselves back at the top of the draft, adding yet another offensive stud to their young, promising core would make them dangerous for years to come. 

The Preds are in dire need of a reset after the last couple of years were disasters with a veteran-laden team. They have added some good young talent, but they still need ‘The Guy’.

The Predators have been a bit mismanaged over the last couple of years, and with a new GM coming in, he will be looking to make his mark on this team early. The draft will be their first chance to do so.

The Predators have plenty of good prospects, but they lack a truly great one. A lottery win would give them a franchise changer. 

The Blues’ front office is changing with Alexander Steen taking the reins as GM from longtime GM Doug Armstrong. When they traded Brayden Schenn at this year’s deadline, it signalled that the team was going to usher in the next generation, and that has been a key focus, with players like Dalibor Dvorsky, Jimmy Snuggerud, and Otto Stenberg seeing varying degrees of NHL time this year.

If they win the lottery, they would be in a position to potentially draft Otto’s younger brother, Ivar Stenberg, giving them a young forward group that could compete with just about anyone in the NHL. 

The New Jersey Devils are the final team that can win the second lottery and draft second overall, so despite just a 2.5 percent chance, the Devils would love to get some luck.

This year was a bit of a disaster. The Devils really struggled when Jack Hughes was out of the lineup, but they looked great with him on the ice. This team held a playoff spot for much of the early season, but they fell out of the race in late December and never seemed to recover. This team could use a shakeup. 

After winning the lottery last year with the 10th-best odds at just 3.5 percent, they changed their franchise by selecting Matthew Schaefer, who stepped in as one of the best young defensemen in the league immediately.

This year, they won’t be able to get into the top spot, only being able to move up 10 spots to third overall, but if they were to get lucky once again, the Islanders could add a piece to help build around Schaefer. Whether it’s a future defensive partner or a forward who can help be a pillar up front, the Islanders would be ecstatic with another long-shot win. 

With their head coach openly saying that this group doesn’t care, the Blue Jackets are likely to make some changes to the roster this off-season. Their odds of a lottery win are slim, and it wouldn’t get them any higher than fourth overall, but adding a high-end player would certainly help bring some joy back for Jackets fans and players alike. 

Life is pain for Wings fans. The Detroit Red Wings are tied with the Canucks for having the worst draft lottery luck of any team in the NHL (by way of moving down the most spots over the lottery’s existence).

If they were to finally win the lottery this year, they would only be able to move up 10 spots to fourth overall. Unfortunately, they sent their first-round pick to St. Louis and didn’t put any protections on it, so whether it’s 14th or 4th, the Wings are going to continue to have terrible lottery luck. 

Is Alexander Ovechkin coming back? That’s what Caps fans really want to know. With just a 0.5 percent chance of winning the lottery, Washington fans aren’t holding their breath when it comes to the lottery. If they win, they’ll be stoked to have the sixth overall pick, but the likelihood is that they’ll draft 16th and have their minds focused on Ovi’s return. 

For a full chart of the odds, Tankathon.com has a chart with odd for every potential pick of each team in the lottery.  

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