Go ahead and believe Macklin Celebrini will do for the San Jose Sharks what Sidney Crosby did for the Pittsburgh Penguins.. Feel free to think the Sharks improve slightly this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can also believe that the Sharks have the best chance of securing the No. 1 NHL draft pick in 2026.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s plausible for all three statements to be true at the same time. That seems relevant these days as we have already started to consider which team might be in the best position to win the lottery and earn the right to draft Penn State freshman forward Gavin McKenna.<\/p>\n
TSN analyst Craig Button has compared McKenna (Whitehorse, Yukon) to Tampa Bay Lightning slick forward Nikita Kucherov who uses deception and trickery to create his offensive magic, McKenna has \u00a0sleight of hand in his game as well.<\/p>\n
With most teams already at or past the 10-game mark, Tankathon.com already has draft lottery odds posted, based on where teams are today in the standings.<\/p>\n
The Calgary Flames (2-8-1) own the highest probability of winning (25.5%) based on their present status as the league\u2019s No. 32 team. They are followed by the San Jose Sharks (2-6-1), St. Louis Blues (3-6-1), Minnesota Wild (3-5-3) and Boston Bruins (5-7-0).<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s my projection of teams with a chance to become a lottery team:\u00a0<\/p>\n
They are headed in the right direction, but building through the draft talent takes a lengthy duration. The Sharks are not there yet. They aren\u2019t yet close to knowing what it takes to win in this league. They give up too many goals. And who are the players who can help them avoid lengthy losing streaks?<\/p>\n
The Predators seem old and tired, and lacking in energy. Unlike the Sharks, the Predators don\u2019t have a collection of younger players to provide the motor necessary to be more competitive. This team probably won\u2019t score enough goals and doesn’t have enough assets to make major changes. They can\u2019t trade goalie Jusse Saros because they don\u2019t have anyone to replace him. There\u2019s not much GM Barry Trotz can do to alter their fate this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The bad news for Calgary fans is the Flames are the team that we\u2019ve seen in the first 11 games of the season. It\u2019s hard to believe the Flames secured 82 points last season. And if they move forward toward trading Nazem Kadri and Rasmus Andersson, the situation will get worse. The good news if it gets worse they might have an outside chance of landing a difference-maker in the 2026 draft.<\/p>\n
The retooling Bruins are giving up 3.67 goals per game. That\u2019s not Bruins hockey, and that\u2019s not a path toward the top half of the standings. It just feels as if the bottom is going to fall out of this team as the season progresses. This is not your older brother\u2019s Boston Bruins.<\/p>\n
The Blackhawks boast a talented, entertaining collection of young hockey players. But does this season seem like the right time for them to rise up? \u00a0They are close to a breakout, but it doesn\u2019t feel like they have learned enough yet. But it would be fun to be wrong about this because it will be entertaining to watch Connor Bedard, Frank Nazar, Sam Rinzel, Artyom Levshunov and Spencer Knight when this group comes together. .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Go ahead and believe Macklin Celebrini will do for the San Jose Sharks what Sidney Crosby did for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5127],"tags":[5,4,4884,106,41217,519,168,5306,5305,1780],"class_list":{"0":"post-274194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose-sharks","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-nhl-draft-order","11":"tag-nhl-news","12":"tag-penn-state-gavin-mckenna","13":"tag-san-jose","14":"tag-san-jose-sharks","15":"tag-sanjose","16":"tag-sanjosesharks","17":"tag-sharks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115459998555579654","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}