The 2023 National Hockey League draft class is about to be one for the ages. Connor Bedard, the top pick overall, is predicted to be a player of the generation in the same class as Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid and Alex Ovechkin. While he’s by far the best player available, there are several other potential candidates who could be top picks in recent drafts.
Adam Fantilli, Leo Carlsson and Matvei Michkov are expected to complete the top 4 and any team could be delighted to add them to their system.
This prospect has made the NHL tank-a-thon quite a dramatic race, despite the fact that ending last has only an 18.5 percent probability of winning the first pick. This ensures that you just select either first or second place as you possibly can only throw one lottery seat away.
As with every good race, you possibly can bet on the NHL tank-a-thon. FanDuel currently has the Columbus Blue Jackets on their list of -105 favorites to finish last in the standings and get the best odds of winning the lottery, but the table is pretty narrow. There are only three points between Columbus in thirty second and Arizona in twenty ninth, and only nine separate the Blue Jackets from the Vancouver Canucks in twenty seventh.
With 35 to 38 games left for every team, there’s loads of room for substitutions, and the trade-in deadline – which is March 3 this season – looks like a giant deal as the teams at the bottom will take a turn for the worse, selling key players to gain more future assets .
Although the Blue Jackets, Anaheim Geese, Chicago Blackhawks and Coyotes have established themselves as top contenders for the “Wood Spoon”, an extended bet is price betting on this dubious contest: the Vancouver Canucks (120/1).
A couple of weeks ago it gave the look of a pipe dream that they’d be bad enough to have an actual probability of landing Bedard (who’s from Vancouver), but in the previous couple of weeks things have modified completely.
While the Canucks have been a soap opera all season, things have really peaked in the last two weeks because it was revealed that the team had a deal to replace head coach Bruce Boudreau with Rick Tocchet. And yet the team only just announced Boudreau’s dismissal on Sunday.
Not only that, but the Canucks are also at an impasse with captain and 30-goal scorer Bo Horvat, an unrestricted free agent after this season, and are desperate to name some veterans to take them off the books. Brock Boeser, Conor Garland, Andrei Kuzmenko and Luke Schenn may leave before the deadline.
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The lack of Horvat and a certain combination of Boeser and Garland will make things much worse for the Canucks, in addition to take away the team’s biggest strength – a really solid top six. If Vancouver was only ok for twenty seventh place with Horvat and Co., imagine how far it may fall when these players walk out the door.
Besides, we do not know the way this team will react to the change of coach. The players loved Boudreau and played hard for him until the end, but now they are going to have to adapt to the recent coach and Tocchet’s completely different personality. This may occasionally not appeal to this group, which has had a fair proportion of disputes with the team boss in the past.
The Canucks are probably too good and too far ahead of the Basement Dwellers to take last place, but there is a probability this thing will get even uglier as we move down.