2024 NHL Draft Lottery Chaos Rankings: Which Macklin Celebrini destination would infuriate fans?
Few things bring out the irrationality in hockey fans like the NHL Draft Lottery. When deputy commissioner Bill Daly presents that logo, mounted on a white card, the tinfoil hat mob lights its torches, armed with conspiracy theories on why commissioner Gary Bettman fixed the result for Team X or Y.
It’s all preposterous, of course, but it adds to the mystique and, if you have no stake in it, the fun. The Lottery takes place Tuesday, May 7, with the winner nabbing the No. 1 overall pick – and shoo-in selection Macklin Celebrini.
Which of the 11 potential winners would cause the most frenzied public reaction? We present to you Daily Faceoff’s second annual Draft Lottery Chaos Rankings, ordered by how much anger, panic and/or excitement they’d bring, with their odds to win in brackets.
11. San Jose Sharks (25.5%)
The Sharks are down bad. Everyone knows it. They just endured their worst season in 28 years. They traded their best player, Tomas Hertl, at the deadline in Year 2 of his eight-year deal and will eat $1,387,500 of his cap hit for the next six years. The Sharks getting Celebrini, forming a potent 1-2 center punch for years to come with Will Smith, would not offend many. Especially when Celebrini has a connection to the Bay Area with his father working as director of sports medicine and performance for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
10. Columbus Blue Jackets (9.5%)
The Blue Jackets have hit rock bottom. The Johnny Gaudreau signing was a disaster. Patrik Laine landed in the player assistance program. The trades for Ivan Provorov and Damon Severson didn’t move the needle. The Mike Babcock coaching hire was doomed from the start and undone before the 2023-24 season even started. General manager Jarmo Kekalainen ran out of rope and got fired this winter. That’s enough punishment for this franchise, no? It’s an underrated market with a fan base that deserves more. Landing Celebrini to pair with last year’s No. 3 overall pick, Adam Fantilli, would establish two long-term pillars up the middle to put Columbus on the path to eventual respectability.
9. Seattle Kraken (6.0%)
Making the playoffs in Year 2 really messed up Seattle’s trajectory, to the point it cost coach Dave Hakstol his job when the Kraken predictably regressed in Year 3. A franchise this young isn’t even done filling out its farm system. It needs more building blocks than Matty Beniers, Shane Wright and Jagger Firkus. Given how early the Kraken are in their existence, they wouldn’t anger many fans by winning the lottery and the right to pick Celebrini.
8. Calgary Flames (5.0%)
By virtue of being a Canadian team and one that was competitive in spurts this season, the Flames would probably offend a few sects if they won the lottery. But this team has never even picked in the top three of a draft in its history. It has only picked in the top five once, landing Sam Bennett fourth in 2014. The Flames are thus pretty darn overdue, and a draft lottery win would feel earned for GM Craig Conroy. He opted not to keep his team in the murky middle and shipped out Tyler Toffoli, Nikita Zadorov, Elias Lindholm, Chris Tanev and Noah Hanifin in the course of a year. Conroy committed to the “step backward to go forward” mentality. Getting to pick a potential superstar would be a nice reward for that.
7. Anaheim Ducks (11.5%)
The Ducks winning the draft lottery would bring a different kind of chaos. It’s not that they’re a particularly polarizing club; it’s that landing Celebrini would open up a lot of possibilities for GM Pat Verbeek to make aggressive moves. The Ducks’ loaded group of young talent includes Leo Carlsson, Mason McTavish and Cutter Gauthier on the forward side. If you add Celebrini to that group? It makes Trevor Zegras even more likely to be traded than he already is. If you’re a fan of big offseason trades, Anaheim would be a sneaky-chaotic lottery winner.
6. Buffalo Sabres (3.0%)
Of the previous teams listed, only one has ever picked first overall in the draft, and it was 22 years ago when Columbus chose Rick Nash. Now we arrive at the first team that would stretch some fans’ patience given how privileged it has already been in recent drafts. The woeful Sabres, now 13 years into their NHL-record playoff drought, picked second in 2014 (Sam Reinhart); second in 2015 (Jack Eichel); first in 2018 (Rasmus Dahlin) and first in 2021 (Owen Power). Buffalo certainly would love to get another first-overall pick, but, sheesh, this franchise sure has squandered its premium draft selections of late. That all those picks have turned into great players makes it all the more befuddling that Buffalo can’t build a winner. The Sabres already have Matt Savoie, Zach Benson, Jack Quinn, Jiri Kulich, Isak Rosen, Dylan Cozens, JJ Peterka…it’s not like they’re hurting for young talent at forward. Then again, the playoff drought alone evokes enough second-hand sympathy that they wouldn’t be the least-liked lottery winner.
5. Ottawa Senators (6.5%)
The Senators have stockpiled young talent and been penciled in for playoff berths several years in a row without breaking through. There’s a sense Ottawa’s core of young players, all of whom signed long-term extensions before sniffing the postseason, has gotten too comfortable. If the Sens win the draft lottery – in new owner Michael Andlauer’s first go round, by the way – it opens up many more possibilities for GM Steve Staios. How many of Ottawa’s core forwards – Tim Stutzle, Brady Tkachuk, Drake Batherson, Josh Norris, Shane Pinto and so on – are untouchable if Celebrini is added to the mix?
4. Montreal Canadiens (8.5%)
Picking first overall would mean two lottery victories in a three-year stretch for the Habs. The reaction to that amount of ping-pong-ball luck would infuriate enough people to lift Montreal into the upper tier of the chaos rankings; again, the Flames have never picked top three, let alone No. 1 twice in a three-year span. How would they feel seeing Montreal win it again? Any franchise as storied and high-profile as the Habs will elicit a strong reaction by winning the lottery. But one could argue the sport is more exciting when the Habs are good. It’s not necessarily fair, but it’s just true.
3. Utah NHL team (7.5%)
Don’t sleep on the chaos factor here. If it were the lowly Arizona Coyotes, securing a star to patrol Mullett Arena, it wouldn’t ruffle many feathers, especially given the franchise has never won the lottery. But if the NHL’s shiny new toy, relocated to Salt Lake City, instantly lands a foundational star? The conspiracy theorists will emerge from every crevice claiming Bettman rigged the lottery to give the new team a boost. Mark my words.
2. New Jersey Devils (3.5%)
Now we arrive at the Oh Come On tier. It’s not that the Devils lack likability; it’s that no one believes they were as bad as their showing in the standings this past season. Just a year removed from being one of the NHL’s most dominant and star-studded teams, they flopped in 2023-24 primarily because of terrible injury luck and worse goaltending. They have all the trappings of a massive bounceback team next season. If their one-year blip wins them the Draft Lottery and Celebrini joins a team that already has Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier, Timo Meier, Jesper Bratt, Dougie Hamilton, Luck Hughes, Simon Nemec and more? Yikes. Fan bases of the actually-bad teams will be furious.
1. Chicago Blackhawks (13.5%)
Think about all the baggage Chicago carried into last year’s lottery, still stained by the 2010 Brad Aldrich sexual assault and ensuing coverup. The Hawks topped the 2023 Chaos Rankings as the market most likely to enrage the other 31 fan bases. Then they won the lottery and got to pick generational talent Connor Bedard. The worst-case scenario played out for everyone who wasn’t a Blackhawks fan.
Let all that sink in – and imagine if the Hawks get Celebrini, too. The amount of fan venom might be enough to crash Twitter.
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