{"id":426395,"date":"2026-01-24T23:15:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T23:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/426395\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T23:15:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T23:15:14","slug":"canadiens-officially-secure-5th-best-odds-in-nhl-draft-lottery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/426395\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens Officially Secure 5th-Best Odds In NHL Draft Lottery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With the 2022-2023 season now in the books for the Montreal Canadiens, they\u2019ve officially secured the fifth-best odds for the NHL Draft Lottery.<\/p>\n<p>It came down to the wire for the Habs, as they were closely followed by the Arizona Coyotes in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/standings\/2022\/league\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NHL standings<\/a> for the better part of two weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to tonight\u2019s game, the Canadiens held down 28th place with 68 points, while Arizona seemed to be deadlocked at 69 points.<\/p>\n<p>With the against the Boston Bruins on Thursday night the Canadiens maintained 28th place\u00a0and will thus have the\u00a0fifth-best odds on May 8 when the league hosts the <a href=\"https:\/\/montreal.nationalhockeynow.com\/2023\/04\/13\/canadiens-draft-lottery-implications-peak-in-final-game-of-season-odds-habs-montreal-bedard\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NHL Draft Lottery<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It means that the Canadiens now have the following potential outcomes for the Lottery:<\/p>\n<p>8.5% chance of picking first overall,<br \/>\n8.8% chance of picking second overall<br \/>\n24.5% chance of picking fifth overall<br \/>\n44.9% chance of picking sixth overall<br \/>\n13.9% chance of picking seventh overall<\/p>\n<p>The Canadiens securing such a high pick in a highly praised draft class is exactly what the doctor ordered for the rebuilding Montreal Canadiens, as they look to add some young, elite talent to their roster.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s precisely in the range that general manager Kent Hughes admitted early on this season that he expected the Canadiens to finish in; as he expected his club to struggle again this season.<\/p>\n<p>For the Montreal Canadiens\u2019 struggles this season, they\u2019ll have the luxury of picking some pretty impressive talent early on in the 2023 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n<p>The likes of Connor Bedard, Adam Fantilli, Matvei Michkov, Will Smith and Zach Benson could be intriguing adds for a Canadiens team that is starved for offence.<\/p>\n<p>After selecting <a href=\"https:\/\/montreal.nationalhockeynow.com\/2023\/01\/21\/montreal-canadiens-options-for-juraj-slafkovsky\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Juraj Slafkovsky<\/a> first overall last season, the Canadiens will be picking in the top 10 for a second consecutive season; something they haven\u2019t done since the 1980 and 1981 NHL Drafts.<\/p>\n<p>Whoever the Canadiens decide to select with the pick will become another major pillar in the club\u2019s efforts to become a Stanley Cup contender in the not-so-distant future.<\/p>\n<p>Now all we can do is wait for May 8 and see if the Montreal Canadiens get lucky two years in a row.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<img alt=\"avatar\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769296514_301_07ba55ead0c73509df880c421e3023e5ac7c7d9f55b4c9b9a5aeeb184bcdf689.png\"  class=\"avatar avatar-70 photo\" height=\"70\" width=\"70\" loading=\"lazy\" fetchpriority=\"low\" decoding=\"async\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\tMarc  has  been  covering  the  Habs  for  over  a  decade.  He  previously  worked  for  Journal  Metro,  The  Athletic,  The  &#8230; More about <a class=\"more-bio\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsnaut.com\/author\/marc-dumont\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Marc Dumont<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the 2022-2023 season now in the books for the Montreal Canadiens, they\u2019ve officially secured the fifth-best odds&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[462],"tags":[5,976,1749,21,4,465,591,466],"class_list":{"0":"post-426395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl-draft","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-juraj-slafkovsky","10":"tag-kent-hughes","11":"tag-montreal-canadiens","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-nhl-draft","14":"tag-nhl-draft-lottery","15":"tag-nhl-entry-draft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115952624438810926","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426395","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=426395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}