The 2024 NHL Draft Lottery will be upon us shortly. If there is a team among the 11 eligible who deserve to win and select first overall, it's the Anaheim Ducks.

The NHL Draft Lottery is set to take place on Tuesday, May 7 at the NHL Network's Studio in New Jersey. Shortly after, the results will be broadcast and the hockey world will know which team will be selecting first overall at the 2024 NHL Entry Draft at the end of June.

Two lottery drawings will be held that day, one for first overall and the other for second. Because of rule changes set in place in 2021, teams can only move up a maximum of ten spots from where they finished in the NHL standings in inverse order and teams can only drop a maximum of two spots. 

Here are the odds the eleven teams have of winning the first lottery and selecting first overall at the 2024 NHL Entry Draft:

The Anaheim Ducks finished the 2023-24 season with a 27-50-5 record and 59 points in the NHL standings. That put them in 30th place and gave them the third-best odds of winning the Draft Lottery. They're guaranteed the opportunity of adding a top-five selection to what is considered by most the top prospect pool in the NHL.

Here are the odds the Ducks have of drafting at each position in which they're eligible:

Macklin Celebrini, a 17-year-old standout center from Boston University who won the Hobey Baker Memorial Award for the NCAA's top men's ice hockey player, is the consensus top player eligible for selection in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft. He is in a tier by himself at the top of the draft. The second tier is seemingly anywhere from 4-12 players deep depending on who's doing the tiering. Celebrini is the prize.

If there was ever a team who deserved to win the 2024 NHL Draft Lottery, it's the Anaheim Ducks.

Never Been Done

In the 30 years in which the Anaheim Ducks/Mighty Ducks of Anaheim have existed as an NHL franchise, they've never selected first overall. 

The Ducks have had eight top-five selections in their history. They've selected second overall three times (1994, 2005, 2023), third overall one time (2021), fourth overall two times (1993, 1995), and fifth overall two times (2001, 1998).

Of the 11 teams eligible to select first overall in 2024, only the Sharks, Ducks, Kraken, and Flames have yet to select at the top of any draft in their franchise's history.

Sustained Inferiority

2023-24 marked the sixth consecutive season in which the Anaheim Ducks missed the playoffs and finished within the bottom ten teams in the NHL standings. 

Of the four teams previously mentioned who have yet to win an NHL Draft Lottery, six years marks the longest streak without a playoff appearance.

Always a Bridesmaid

Generational talents, by definition, don't come around often. On average, once every ten years or so, an NHL draft-eligible player who is so supremely talented they're destined to become the best hockey player in the world one day comes along. This player has the capability to singlehandedly alter the fortunes of a franchise and become a perennial Hart Trophy candidate on a sustained Stanley Cup-contending team.

Due to poor Draft Lottery luck, the Anaheim Ducks have had to draft second overall behind such a player. TWICE.

Three players have been awarded the consensus "generational" label since the salary cap was instituted in 2005-06 (the modern era of the NHL); Sidney Crosby in 2005, Connor McDavid in 2015, and Connor Bedard in 2023.

In 2005, the Anaheim Ducks selected second overall after the NHL lost an entire season due to a lockout. 

Years before the 2005 Entry Draft, Sidney Crosby was touted as the "Next One." In his draft year, he scored 66 goals and 168 points in 62 games for Rimouski Oceanic of the QMJHL. The Pittsburgh Penguins won the 2005 Draft Lottery and selected Crosby who, to date, has played nearly 1300 games, scored nearly 1600 points, captained the Penguins for 17 seasons, won two Hart Trophies, two Maurice Richard Trophies, Two Olympic Gold Medals, and three Stanley Cups (to only name some of his accomplishments).

In 2023, the Anaheim Ducks selected second overall after finishing the 2022-23 season with the worst record in the NHL (23-47-12) and only managing 58 points in the standings. They were one of the worst defensive teams in history and allowed 335 goals, the most surrendered by a team in the salary cap era (2005-present). 

The Ducks had a 25.5% chance of winning the 2023 NHL Draft Lottery and the right to select Connor Bedard. In his draft year, Bedard scored 71 goals and 143 points in 57 games as the captain of the Regina Pats of the WHL. He scored 23 points in seven games at the 2023 World Junior Championship en route to his second World Junior Championship Gold Medal. Bedard will likely win the Calder Trophy as the NHL's most prolific rookie in 2023-24 despite missing 14 games with a fractured jaw as he scored 22 goals and 61 points in 68 games.

The Anaheim Ducks won the second drawing in both the 2005 and 2023 Draft Lotteries. In 2005, they selected Bobby Ryan second overall who played six seasons for the Ducks, scoring 288 points in 378 games. In 2023, they selected Leo Carlsson second overall, who has the makings to become a truly dominant player in the NHL for a long time. Both Ryan and Carlsson are high-quality "consolation prizes," but one can't help but wonder "What if?"

Unexpected Setbacks

In the summer of 2023, the Anaheim Ducks hired a new head coach, Greg Cronin. To Anaheim, Cronin brought with him a new set of standards and values for his players on and off the ice. 

Ducks General Manager Pat Verbeek signed a pair of veterans to UFA contracts on July 1, Alex Killorn (four years, $25 million) and Radko Gudas (three years, $12 million). He also traded a fourth-round pick for veteran defenseman, Ilya Lyubushkin.

Though they lost the 2023 Draft Lottery, the Ducks selected one of the best draft-eligible prospects to ever play in the SHL, Leo Carlsson. Carlsson was set to join a nucleus of young players in Anaheim expected to make up the core of a sustained Stanley Cup-contending team when they all reach the primes of their careers. 

Trevor Zegras (23), Jamie Drysdale (22), Mason McTavish (21), Pavel Mintyukov (20), and Leo Carlsson (19) were all set to play elevated roles for the Ducks in 2023-24. The five of them represented the Ducks' previous top-ten draft selections from the 2019-2023 NHL Drafts.

The core was set. The core got injured.

While a playoff push may have been a tall order for the Ducks' roster in 2023-24, they were expected to make significant strides toward climbing out of the league's basement and readying their young players toward taking the next steps in their developments.

The Anaheim Ducks totaled 304 man-games lost due to injury in 2023-24, the seventh-most in the NHL. More significant than the number of games lost due to injury was to whom those injuries were sustained. Seven former first-round picks missed at least 15 games each due to injury this season, including all five previously mentioned. In a season in which the development of young players was the main objective, that was a seismic blow.

If there were a team who deserves to win the 2024 NHL Draft Lottery and the right to select Macklin Celebrini, it's the Anaheim Ducks. The defense rests.

The NHL Draft Lottery is won and lost by chance, pure chance. If one were to claim it to be "rigged" due to previous outcomes, it isn't "rigged" and the NHL posts the drawing every year after the broadcast airs as proof.

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