San Jose Sharks get the No. 1 pick after finishing with the worst record in overall NHL standings.
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Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes is not a very superstitious man.
He wasn’t holding a rabbit’s foot or a coin or anything else that might somehow bring him good luck while watching Tuesday night’s NHL Draft Lottery on TV.
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In the end, the Canadiens ended up with the No. 5 overall pick for this year’s draft after finishing with the fifth-worst record in the overall NHL standings for the second straight year. The Canadiens also ended up with the No. 5 pick last year and used it to select defenceman David Reinbacher.
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The San Jose Sharks won the No. 1 pick at Tuesday night’s lottery, followed by the Chicago Blackhawks at No. 2, the Anaheim Ducks at No. 3, the Columbus Blue Jackets at No. 4 and the Canadiens at No. 5. That’s exactly how the teams finished in order, starting from the bottom of the NHL standings.
The Canadiens went into the lottery with only an 8.5 per cent chance of getting the No. 1 pick.
In the complicated draft lottery system, the Canadiens had an 8.6 per cent chance of getting the No. 2 pick, a 0.3 per cent chance of getting the No. 3 pick, zero chance of the No. 4 pick, a 24.5 per cent chance of the No. 5 pick, a 44 per cent chance of the No. 6 pick and a 14.2 per cent chance of the No. 7 pick, the lowest they could have ended up.
The Sharks had the best odds of getting the No. 1 pick at 18.5 per cent. This marks the first time San Jose will have the No. 1 pick at the draft.
The top-rated prospect for this year’s draft is Macklin Celebrini, a 6-foot, 190-pound centre who posted 32-32-64 totals in 38 games this season as a 17-year-old freshman at Boston University.
“I’m not super-superstitious, to be perfectly honest,” Hughes said in a video conference after the lottery. “I think there are probably others in the organization that are more than I am. But, certainly, when you’re watching — this is the third time through now for me doing it — and you had a chance to draft Connor Bedard (who went to the Blackhawks) last year and Macklin Celebrini (this year) … so they’re franchise-altering hockey players.”
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The Canadiens won the No. 1 pick at the 2022 draft lottery — Hughes’s first as GM — and took forward Juraj Slafkovsky, who had 20-30-50 totals while playing in all 82 games this season.
“You obviously hope to win,” Hughes said about Tuesday night’s lottery. “But the reality is the percentages of the lottery are such that the most likely outcome is that we pick sixth. So, in that regard, we’ve had good luck with the lottery. When we finished last and were due to pick first, we did. And the other two we picked where we were set based on the end-of-the-season standings.”
TSN draft guru Bob McKenzie released his draft rankings on Monday and, as expected, Celebrini was at No. 1, followed by skilled Russian forward Ivan Demidov at No. 2, towering Russian defenceman Anton Silayev at No 3, Belarusian defenceman Artyom Levshunov, who plays at Michigan State, at No. 4, and high-scoring centre Cayden Lindstrom of the Medicine Hat Tigers at No. 5.
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A lack of offence from the forwards has been a big problem for the Canadiens, who ranked 26th in the NHL in offence this season despite getting 48 goals from their defencemen, the fourth-most in the league.
“I think what I’ve said is all things equal we would draft a forward, and I think that remains the case,” Hughes said after learning he will have the No. 5 pick this year. “As far as having the opportunity to sit down with our scouts — which we’re going to do next week — will really kind of solidify exactly where they see the group of players that are available.”
If Lindstrom is available at No. 5 he would certainly seem like a good fit for the Canadiens. The 6-foot-3, 210-pound centre had 27-19-46 totals and 66 penalty minutes this season with the WHL’s Medicine Hat Tigers while being limited to 32 games because of surgery for an upper-body injury suffered in December.
Medicine Hat coach Willie Desjardins told NHL.com that Lindstrom’s injury and being out of action for an extended period could impact how some NHL teams view the Chetwynd, B.C., native heading into the draft.
“But in saying that, I think clubs know what he can do when he’s healthy, that’s the positive side of it,” Desjardins, who coached the Vancouver Canucks from 2014-17 and served as interim head coach of the Los Angeles Kings in 2018-19, told NHL.com in February. “He’s gifted athletically, he can really shoot a puck and he’s got great speed. He can overpower guys. He passes the puck like a pro and he’s hard to play against. He’s even a better person. He can take criticism. He smiles. He’s excited to be at the rink. He knows where he wants to go, and he’s driven to his goals.”
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The only other forwards McKenzie has ranked in the top 10 after Lindstrom are 5-foot-11, 180-pound Finnish centre Konsta Helenius at No. 9 and 6-foot, 186-pound centre Tij Iginla, the son of Hall of Famer Jarome Iginla, at No. 10. Iginla had 47-37-84 totals in 64 games this season with the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets.
This year’s draft will be held June 28-29 at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
scowan@postmedia.com
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