NHL Draft Lottery 2024 results and analysis: Sharks land No. 1 pick (2024)

The San Jose Sharks will pick first in June's NHL Draft, where they're expected to select Boston University center Macklin Celebrini.

Here's the draft order as decided by Tuesday's lottery.

1. San Jose Sharks
2. Chicago Blackhawks
3. Anaheim Ducks
4. Columbus Blue Jackets
5. Montreal Canadiens
6. Utah HC
7. Ottawa Senators
8. Seattle Kraken
9. Calgary Flames
10. New Jersey Devils
11. Buffalo Sabres
12. Philadelphia Flyers
13. Minnesota Wild
14. San Jose Sharks (via Pittsburgh Penguins)
15. Detroit Red Wings
16. St. Louis Blues

If you're one of those weirdos who doesn't want us to have a draft lottery at all, congratulations – this year we kind of didn’t.

Everyone stayed put, with the Sharks winning the first lottery and the Hawks winning the second. Everyone else stays put.

That was the most likely scenario, but still only roughly a 2 percent chance if my math is right.

San Jose: Celebrini/Smith

Anaheim: Celebrini/Carlsson/McTavish

Chicago Bedard/Celebrini

Will be one of the eventual core groups.

The nightmare endgame to Kyle Dubas’ first season in Pittsburgh — the Penguins missing the playoffs and not getting the first-round pick — has hit.

My guess is the Penguins would have allowed the Sharks to take the No. 4 pick, anyway. But it’s a moot point now.

My annual reminder that there's a way to do this that would be way more fun: Let the 16 lottery teams "draft" the 16 playoff teams. Worst team gets the top pick, and so on, with whoever has paired up with the Cup winner getting the No. 1 pick.

You televise the whole thing the night before the playoffs start, and boom, you have 32 fan bases caring about the playoffs instead of just 16.

I wrote about the idea here:

We just got a very funny reminder from the Sportsnet broadcast: There are a grand total of five No. 1 picks still alive in the Stanley Cup playoffs (Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid, Aaron Ekblad, Alexis Lafrenière).

Yes, it's the second round. I still would've thought that the number would be a little higher. So if your team misses out on Macklin Celebrini, don't freak out just yet.

The notion that a projected No. 1 pick could be flying under the radar sounds ludicrous. But when you’re next in line after Connor Bedard, and the public is perhaps still recovering from the media circus he drew in his draft year, it’s actually possible.

No, Celebrini is not a once-in-a-decade prospect like Bedard. He is, however, a special player with franchise center potential — one who deserves more buzz and attention than he’s currently getting. Celebrini, the youngest player in college hockey, scored 32 goals and 64 points in 38 games as a freshman at Boston University and won the Hobey Baker Award.

The dynamic two-way center’s 1.68 points-per-game rate as a first-time draft-eligible player in the NCAA only narrowly trails Jack Eichel (1.77) and Adam Fantilli (1.80). The key difference, however, is that Eichel and Fantilli were both two of the oldest players of their respective draft classes. They were ripping it up as 18-year-olds whereas Celebrini, one of the youngest players of his draft class, won’t turn 18 until June.

It’s rare for 17-year-olds to produce in the NCAA — no player since 2000 has scored more at the same age than Celebrini. Jonathan Toews, for context, is second in U18 NCAA scoring with 22 goals and 39 points in 42 games for the University of North Dakota during his draft year.

Here’s a closer look at Celebrini’s game and what makes him such a talent — and why his two-way game is reminiscent of Toews.