{"id":568219,"date":"2026-05-06T11:09:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T11:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/568219\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T11:09:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T11:09:21","slug":"blackhawks-drop-in-the-nhl-draft-lottery-and-will-have-the-no-4-pick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/568219\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackhawks drop in the NHL draft lottery and will have the No. 4 pick"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO \u2014 The Chicago Blackhawks<\/a> will pick fourth in the NHL draft, their fourth consecutive year with a top-four pick.<\/p>\n

The Hawks entered Tuesday\u2019s draft lottery with the second-highest odds (13.5%) of landing the No. 1 pick, which wound up going to the Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> (8.5%).<\/p>\n

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The San Jose Sharks<\/a> then won the second draw, dropping the Vancouver Canucks<\/a> \u2014 who had the highest odds \u2014 to No. 3 and the Hawks to No. 4. The New York Rangers<\/a> will pick fifth.<\/p>\n

The Hawks already have the youngest roster in the NHL and will get even younger with the arrival of the new draftee. Forwards Ivar Stenberg of Sweden and Gavin McKenna of Penn State, both 18, are the consensus top prospects in the draft, which will take place June 26-27 in Buffalo, N.Y.<\/p>\n

With both players likely off the board when the Hawks are on the clock, they could target Brantford Bulldogs center Caleb Malhotra, considered the third-best forward prospect. While Hawks general manager Kyle Davidson has drafted a long line of forwards in recent years, the pending free agency of Ilya Mikheyev<\/a> and the uncertain status of Andr\u00e9 Burakovsky<\/a>, whom the Hawks might buy out, could open roster spots.<\/p>\n

Malhotra, 17, made noise with a dominant showing in the Ontario Hockey League playoffs, totaling 26 points (13 goals, 13 assists) in 15 games to add to his regular-season total of 84 points in 67 games. He could give the Hawks another immediate scoring threat, either adding to their depth at center or potentially flipping to a wing.<\/p>\n

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Other top forward prospects are Windsor Spitfires left wing Ethan Belchetz, Swedish center\/right wing Viggo Bj\u00f6rck, Boston College left wing Oscar Hemming, Boston University center Tynan Lawrence and Finnish center Oliver Suvanto.<\/p>\n

Having used high picks in recent years on Artyom Levshunov<\/a> (No. 2 in 2024) and Kevin Korchinski<\/a> (No. 7 in 2022), the Hawks are less likely to take a defenseman at No. 4. This draft class has several highly rated blue-liners, however, so the Prince George Cougars\u2019 Carson Carels, the Soo Greyhounds\u2019 Chase Reid, Latvia\u2019s Alberts \u0160mits and North Dakota\u2019s Keaton Verhoeff could be options when the Hawks are on the clock.<\/p>\n

The Maple Leafs entered with the fifth-highest odds of landing the top pick and moved up four spots. They would have had to transfer their pick to the Boston Bruins<\/a> if it hadn\u2019t been in the top five.<\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 The Chicago Blackhawks will pick fourth in the NHL draft, their fourth consecutive year with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5115],"tags":[4253,495,521,95,37,96,5263,2626,63786,5,8180,1562,35,4,168,8499,31,27],"class_list":["post-568219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-blackhawks","tag-andre-burakovsky","tag-artyom-levshunov","tag-blackhawks","tag-boston-bruins","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-blackhawks","tag-chicagoblackhawks","tag-draft-lottery","tag-forwards-ivar-stenberg","tag-hockey","tag-ilya-mikheyev","tag-kevin-korchinski","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-nhl","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-the-hawks","tag-toronto-maple-leafs","tag-vancouver-canucks"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116527324460183256","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568219","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=568219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}