NHL 2025 Draft Lottery Results: The San Jose Sharks Will Pick 2nd Overall

NHL 2025 Draft Lottery Results: The San Jose Sharks Will Pick 2nd Overall

class is now in session i’m professor hockey and today we’ll be discussing the 2025 nhl draft lottery that has just concluded and it was an absolutely crazy half an hour first of all the nhl decided to change the format and how they present the draft lottery in the past they would have the drawing actually occur backstage with their machine multiple hours before the actual show would start and then they would have bill daly come out with his 16 cards and slowly reveal what the draft order would be but this time around perhaps in an effort to be a little bit more transparent they decide to actually do the drawing live we get to see the machine in action and so it’s a slow process as each ball does get drawn and by the time we had three of four the sharks were left with just a 1 in1 chance of actually getting the first overall pick and that was not enough as it was instead revealed to belong to the new york islanders and this was an absolutely insane result because in the previous season nothing actually had changed in draft order the sharks finished last place and they got the first overall pick chicago finished second last and they got the second overall pick this time around though the islanders they only had a 3.5% chance of winning they jump up from 10th to first that is huge huge movement that bumped everybody down one and so the sharks now could only finish as high as second which they also do a drawing for and this time around when there were three balls chosen the sharks actually had a 4 on 111 chance to win with one of their combinations but also a two on 111 chance on top of that so a total of six on 11 to win with another team’s combinations because as we know the draft lottery rules state that a team can only move up a maximum of 10 spots and this rule ended up being very very good for the sharks to have and truly showed the value of what comes out of finishing directly in last place yes it’s nice to have the most amount of combinations that move in your favor to have the 18.5% chance but it’s that extra 7% chance that is added on top of it where those other teams win the lottery but can’t actually move up as high because it is not the sharks who get the second overall pick it is belonging to the utah hockey club but because they had finished 14th and only had a 1.5% chance of winning they can only jump up to fourth giving the sharks the second round pick by default so they technically didn’t win either of these two lotteryies and yet it still goes in their benefit they will still pick second now this is the type of news that would have been extremely depressing last season where there was a very clear obvious number one choice and then a fall-off after that if the sharks did not end up being able to draft celbrini last season and they were left with any of the other choices they’d be pretty sad that’s not to say that a player like levchenov or who the sharks probably would have taken demidov are any bad but obviously celbrrini is a cut above the rest this year however it does seem we have kind of narrowed things down actually to a top two pick and so for the sharks to still pick second does work in their benefit the problem here is is that for many sharks fans they really wanted to be able to draft matthew schaefer and he was at this point the projected first overall selection not as overwhelmingly so as celrini was but this is who a lot of people think will end up going at number one but there was a possibility that certain teams would end up moving towards a forward instead because they don’t necessarily need the defense and maybe the gap isn’t actually that large this was the case for instance with the chicago blackhawks who have really impressive defenseman on their blue line but maybe lack in some high-end talent at forward they may have ended up taking who many considered to be the best forward in this year’s draft michael misa another example would be the philadelphia flyers who are really desperately searching for a future elite number one center to play with mattfe mishkov they may have also gone with michael misa at number one the islanders on the other hand it’s a little bit more shaky i don’t want to rule out this possibility but the problem here is that the islanders prospect pool is really just not that good and at the top of it their two best players here are likely cole eisermanman who is a forward and their first round pick from last year and callum richie who is also a forward who was acquired in the brock nelson trade this season they don’t have a clear-cut huge defensive prospect there who might block matthew schaefer a little bit if anything one might think that they would want the best possible defenseman out of this draft and so it there is a clear need there for the islanders to go with schaefer especially if you consider him the best pick but there is some hope here for the shark still because unlike with celibbrini again who was that obvious choice while schaefer many consider him to be that top guy there is definitely some risk involved because schaefer has not played a lot of games this season in fact just 17 in the regular season in the ohl there’s obviously some time spent at the world juniors and other tournaments but the sample size is quite small and while some gms are willing to take a risk in that situation for instance we saw the columbus blue jackets draft kaden lindstöm at fourth overall last season despite the fact he only played about half of the year in the whl and he was expected to pretty much not play this year at all they were willing to take that risk cuz they really thought lindstöm was a great player the islanders could be that risky as well but considering their prospect pool is somewhat meek weak maybe they want to go with what they could feel is more of a sure thing and they would be more willing to bring in michael misa it is the case that their prospect pool despite their two guy best guys being forwards neither of them i would say project as like a clear-cut number one elite top liner michael misa he might be a lot closer to that particular position so while this is likely just kind of me coping with this situation and being hopeful that the sharks could still end up with schaefer i will say it is not a 100% guarantee like if the sharks ended up picking second last year and they would have obviously missed out on celrini there is a possibility of the situation occurring but even if schaefer does go at number one the sharks at number two it is expected that they would end up taking michael misa many believe that he is the current best forward available in this year’s draft it wasn’t the case at the start of the year james hagens was obviously involved in that conversation in fact he was the number one guy just a few months ago but as this season has progressed and hagens has kind of slowed down a little bit with boston college and michael misa has completely dominated the ohl that has pretty quickly flipped over now there are a few scenarios that we do have to consider here that could end up occurring on that draft day or even prior to it first of which is the possibility of a trade one to consider potentially is a trade up actually a swap of number one and number two with the new york islanders i don’t know if this has actually happened before in nhl history i imagine maybe like once or twice but clearly it’s not a very common occurrence but if the islanders are more so open to taking one of schaefer or misa but the sharks really really want schaefer the islanders could end up being able to get a pretty good asset from the sharks that they might be willing to part with in that type of situation again it’s not likely but it is a possibility of occurring the maybe slightly more likely scenario would be a sharks trade down as we know the sharks they do probably want a defenseman out of this draft they’ll be fine taking a forward but i think that was really the optimal situation to occur which is why they really wanted to be able to grab schaefer at number one but if he is gone the sharks don’t actually have like a next best defenseman to take mike greer himself has said that after schaefer it’s a pretty heavy forward draft and so the sharks have the possibility of trading down from second maybe move to something like ninth with the buffalo sabres and try and grab one of their young defensive talents maybe someone like owen power though he’s uh on a long-term contract i don’t know how willing mike greer will be for that maybe someone like bow and byron i’m not a fan of bow and byron but they might go for it perhaps trade down to 10th with the anaheim ducks and try and grab like paddle mikov or jackson lome i don’t know if they’d be willing to part with him probably not but it is the possibility for the number two overall pick or even something completely off the board and just trade it to the los angeles kings try and get brandt clark from them maybe another prospect like liam greenree give them the second overall pick and take their late first in like the mid20s something along these lines could occur again these are not likely possibilities i think the most obvious scenario here for the sharks is that they just do end up drafting at number two but they cannot be fully discounted either the other thing that we do need to consider here is that at number two while michael misa depending on if schaefer is gone at number one seems to be the very likely choice to take at that second spot it is not a guarantee either there are other names that could end up competing for that spot one in particular does kind of stand out for me we have seen mike greer be kind of very keyed in on trying to address the size issue with the sharks and we have seen ryan worovski the sharks head coach also be very kind of focused on this he himself actually gave an interview near the end of the season where he mentioned how they need to bring in more size and that that is the plan moving forward and the two best prospects right now on the sharks at forward are mlin cerrone and will smith these are not small players both of them are six feet but they’re obviously not the most physically imposing celibbrini has a little bit of snarl to his game but even then he’s not going to be the one to throw a bunch of hits out and definitely smith isn’t going to be doing that either now michael misa is also relatively big at over 6 ft but he doesn’t quite have that physicality and that snarl to his game there is a prospect at the top of this draft who does fit these needs and that does uh that is porter martone now misa is a center and you can never have too many centers but he’s not a natural one i do know prior to this season he actually was playing on the wing so this transition is a recent occurrence and on top of that we also know that the sharks really want to have will smith eventually end up as a center with the team they plan on transitioning him to that role going into next year they want that one-two punch of cbrini and smith so they might be slightly willing to go for a winger and i’m not saying i want this right this is very important to mention if it came down to misa and martone and i had to make the decision i would absolutely choose michael misa but i will say that we cannot remove this possibility that greer will be so focused on trying to bring in someone who can bring more physicality and can be more of an imposing figure on the ice he might try to take someone like marton at number two again we cannot forget that as a possibility moving forward but generally i would say this draft lottery has ended up not the best obviously for the sharks but not in the worst situation either the movement was quite crazy islanders fans are ecstatic utah hockey club fans are ecstatic and the sharks they have to be relatively excited with the fact that they end up getting that second overall pick as i said if all things go as expected that number one or number two was really the prime position to be in and the sharks are number two class dismissed

Discussing the recent 2025 NHL draft lottery that saw the San Jose Sharks get the 2nd overall pick in the 2025 entry draft.