Stephens: Ducks fans, the NHL draft lottery is almost here
The draft lottery is here at last, Ducks faithful, so allow yourselves to get excited. Really. It is OK. Permission is granted to get giddy.
Wary, you are? Perhaps you’re already steeling yourself to be disappointed on Monday night. Anaheim has never won the lottery and why would the NHL change now, right? Gary Bettman will simply not allow it. Not on his watch. Especially not this lottery with that kind of potentially transformative talent at the very top of this draft.
You have your reasons to feel that the NHL is bound and determined to make sure Connor Bedard doesn’t set up shop in Southern California. Anaheim is too small of a hockey market. No one cares about hockey in La-La Land. Can’t have him wearing those ugly jerseys. Got to make sure he lands with one of the qualifying hotbeds that will truly appreciate him. The Ducks don’t even sell out Honda Center. Can’t have him playing in front of rows of empty seats.
And there is recent lottery history. The Ducks had the second-best odds to win in 2021 and dropped to third. They fell from fifth to sixth in 2020. Dropped from eighth to ninth in 2019. Teams with worse odds regularly jump over them. They’re never the one doing the leaping.
You know full well by now, Ducks faithful, that your team has the best odds of getting the No. 1 pick. Finishing with the fewest points this past season makes for an 18.5 percent chance, which is really 25.5 percent given that no team can jump up more than 10 spots. You also may focus on 25.5 percent not being the same as 50 percent or even 100 percent, the way that the draft once guaranteed the league’s worst club.
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Indeed, deputy commissioner Bill Daly could turn over the Ducks’ logo before he gets to the final placard and the suspicions of a clandestine pivot-Bedard-away-from-Anaheim plot will take root. The Ducks can drop and there will be disappointment, starting with general manager Pat Verbeek doing his best to hide that on camera. Months of losses with no desire to make moves and turn the team’s fortunes will have resulted in not getting the consensus best player. Try finding someone who doesn’t think Bedard will be the No. 1 pick.
If you’ve been bracing yourselves for a giant letdown, that’s all right. The pain won’t be as great if you’re not emotionally invested. But … you can dare to dream. Because what if the Ducks do win?
There is excitement within the team’s corridors. The business office, which has been promoting Trevor Zegras since he started turning heads with his highlight-reel plays and outgoing personality, should be salivating at the thought of marketing Bedard and pumping the Ducks brand out into the hockey sphere. Teams that aren’t the Lakers or Dodgers must grab attention in the crowded SoCal sports landscape. If even for a moment Monday, Bedard would be an attention-grabber the Ducks should see fit to capitalize on.
The hockey side of the operation can envision a brighter future with No. 98 (or No. 16, though we think Verbeek is more amenable to rookies having higher numbers) hopping over the boards every third or fourth shift and when the first power play unit is to take the ice. The Ducks have a ton of needs. A defense beyond Cam Fowler and Jamie Drysdale must be constructed, but there is the thought that one can be built in the coming seasons from a pipeline full of talented prospects. But there isn’t as much up front ready to break through for a team already leaning on Zegras, Troy Terry and Mason McTavish.
Bedard will obviously make a difference there. Feel free to think if the next head coach will have Bedard, who turns 18 in July, center his own line or start him on right wing with one of their existing talents in the middle. Imagine Bedard teaming back up with McTavish after capturing gold together with Team Canada at the 2022 world juniors. Or imagine him starting out at center and having Zegras on his left side. With his shot-making already at an elite level, it stands to reason that he’ll be handed top-six opportunities to thrive in unless the adjustment from junior hockey to the NHL is tougher for him at the start.
Bedard’s presence could help push someone like Zegras, who, entering his age-22 season, is no longer the thrilling newcomer and can stand to take his game to a level that makes him a real blossoming franchise star, the way Elias Pettersson did in Vancouver. Bedard might be a featured piece for the Ducks, but he wouldn’t be the only one. He would be an ideal forward to be part of their core for a new age, after an era defined by the twin beacons of Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry.
Can you see Bedard and Zegras being the new Anaheim dynamic duo, with either McTavish or Terry captaining the Ducks and the other being a trusty all-important alternate? Why not? That’s what the lottery is for. To dream.
All those visions of Bedard and what the Ducks can do with him on and off the ice will just be a cruel tease if another team with lesser odds is Monday’s victor. It could certainly stoke those who still have what-might-have-been vibes from 2005, when Pittsburgh won the lottery instead of Anaheim and wound up with Sidney Crosby, while the Ducks got Bobby Ryan. To not have Bedard after watching (or bypass watching some nights) the team wander through a franchise-worst 23-47-12 season would be underwhelming, and it’d be all right to feel that way.
It also means all wouldn’t be lost. The Ducks are guaranteed to fall no lower than the No. 3 draft position no matter how the lottery shakes out. And that’s an important spot to be in with this draft. Bedard would be gone but it seems certain that Adam Fantilli or Leo Carlsson would be there for the taking. Being in the No. 2 spot would give them the choice of either. It isn’t No. 1 but those aren’t bad places to sit.
After finishing with the worst record, Verbeek can avoid the dilemma of choosing (and having to wait for) Matvei Michkov, who’d be a sure-fire top-five pick if he weren’t under contract to his KHL team for three more years. Verbeek has already shown, with last year’s pick of defenseman Pavel Mintyukov, that he’ll go for high-end talent regardless of wherever it comes from. His former boss in Tampa Bay and Detroit, Steve Yzerman, is that way. Still, unless he projects Michkov to have the best career out of anyone in this draft, it doesn’t make sense to go against the grain.
The Ducks will be fine if they don’t have Bedard. Fantilli and Carlsson are big centers who are projected to be front-line players of their own. Fantilli has also played on left wing and could slot into Anaheim’s 2023-24 lineup after winning the Hobey Baker Award as a freshman. Carlsson can also play the wing and might need a little more seasoning but also has drawn some comparisons with Colorado star Mikko Rantanen. Even Will Smith is a touted fast-rising playmaking center, although he’s committed to play at Boston College next season.
To add either to the mix they’re trying to create should make Ducks fans feel optimistic about the coming years. But let’s not kid ourselves here. Bedard is the big prize and the Ducks winning this lottery would be a seminal moment for the franchise. There will be due diligence for a few weeks and conversations to be had with him and feigned suspense to be maintained until it’s time to head to the podium on June 28 inside Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. Then, the foregone conclusion will become reality.
Connor Bedard won’t win the Ducks a bunch of games right away. Next year’s playoffs won’t become an overnight expectation. But with him, they’ll would be worth watching every night and would have some relevance within the hockey world. Maybe even in Southern California. And that would be quite a start. Feel free to get your hopes up.
