NHL Draft Lottery: When is it, what are the Sharks’ chances, and how does it work?
NHL Draft Lottery will be televised on ESPN; Boston University's Mack Celebrini is considered the best player available
The NHL Draft Lottery, perhaps the biggest event on the San Jose Sharks’ calendar this year, will be held on May 7, the league announced Friday.
The lottery will take place at the NHL Network’s studio in Secaucus, N.J., and will be broadcast in the U.S. on ESPN, and on Sportsnet and TVA Sports in Canada. The NHL said a specific time for the lottery will be announced next week.
The lottery determines the selection order for the first 16 picks in the first round of this year’s draft. The teams in the lottery are the ones that did not qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs or the teams that have acquired the first-round drafting positions of those non-playoff teams.
The NHL uses a lottery to determine the first and second overall selections. A team can move up to 10 spots in the draft, so only the top 11 seeds are eligible to receive the first overall selection.
The Sharks (19-54-9), by finishing with the fewest points in the NHL with 47, have a 25.5% chance of winning the first lottery and selecting No. 1 overall.
The Sharks have an 18.5% chance of winning the lottery themselves and an added 7% chance of getting the first overall selection if any of the teams that finished 12th through 16th win the first drawing. The odds of those five teams winning add up to 7%.
The Sharks also have an 18.8% chance of drafting second and a 55.7% chance of drafting third. They have never drafted first overall.
After the first lottery draw, the odds for the remaining teams will increase proportionately for the second lottery draw, based on which team wins the first one.
The best player available in this year’s draft is center Mack Celebrini, the former Jr. Shark who won the Hobey Baker Award as the top player in college hockey this season.
The 17-year-old Celebrini, a Vancouver native and the son of Dr. Rick Celebrini, the Warriors’ director of sports medicine and performance, had 64 points in 38 games in his freshman season at Boston University.
The Sharks also own a top-10-protected first-round draft pick from Pittsburgh as part of the trade that sent Erik Karlsson to the Penguins last August. Pittsburgh, seeded 14th, has a 1.5% chance of winning the lottery.
If the Penguins do not move into fourth overall after next month’s lottery, the Sharks will take ownership of that selection, which will be 14th overall.
If they move up in the draft, the Penguins can keep that first-round draft pick and defer the pick they owe the Sharks to 2025. That pick would be unprotected.
NHL Draft Lottery odds
San Jose Sharks 18.5%
Chicago Blackhawks 13.5%
Anaheim Ducks 11.5%
Columbus Blue Jackets 9.5%
Montreal Canadiens 8.5%
Utah 7.5%
Ottawa Senators 6.5%
Seattle Kraken 6.0%
Calgary Flames 5.0%
New Jersey Devils 3.5%
Buffalo Sabres 3.0%
Philadelphia Flyers 2.5%
Minnesota Wild 2.0%
Pittsburgh Penguins *1.5%
Detroit Red Wings 0.5%
St. Louis Blues 0.5%
*Pittsburgh will transfer its first-round pick in either the 2024 or 2025 NHL Draft to San Jose. If Pittsburgh’s 2024 first-round pick becomes a top 10 pick due to the Draft Lottery, Pittsburgh will have the option to transfer its 2025 first-round pick to San Jose instead of its 2024 1st-round pick.
How the lottery works
For each of the two drawings, 14 ping pong balls, numbered 1 through 14, are placed in a lottery machine. That allows for 1,001 possible combinations (one combination is deleted to make it an even 1,000). Each lottery team is assigned a certain number of four-number combinations. The Sharks have 185 combinations, more than any other team.
The lottery machine selects four balls, and the resulting four-number series is matched against a chart showing every possible combination. The team that has that combination wins the lottery.
Last year, the Sharks had the first three numbers drawn, 5, 13, and 4, and just needed a 12 to pop up in the bingo-style machine. Instead, a nine came up, giving the Chicago Blackhawks the winning combination and the right to select Connor Bedard, who had 61 points in 68 games this season and is favored to win this year’s Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie.