{"id":584064,"date":"2026-05-26T12:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T12:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/584064\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T12:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T12:54:16","slug":"these-2-maple-leafs-stars-had-incredible-reaction-to-draft-lottery-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/584064\/","title":{"rendered":"These 2 Maple Leafs stars had incredible reaction to draft lottery news"},"content":{"rendered":"

These 2 Maple Leafs stars had incredible reaction to draft lottery news<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> only had the fifth-best odds in the NHL Draft lottery.<\/p>\n

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They came away with the No. 1 overall pick anyway, with luck on their side, and if they want, that means they can draft Canadian phenom Gavin McKenna.<\/p>\n

A new video is circulating now that shows how William Nylander<\/a> and Matthew Knies<\/a>, two current star wings for the Leafs, reacted to the news.<\/p>\n

The pair was at an AHL playoff game for the Toronto Marlies, and as the video shows, they couldn’t quite believe it.<\/p>\n

Someone told them what happened, but they first had to look it up on their phones to confirm for their own ways.<\/p>\n

They were pumped:<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Jets’ trade cost of Connor Hellebuyck to Sabres revealed<\/a><\/p>\n

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It was obviously a tough season for everyone involved in Toronto. They didn’t plan on missing the playoffs so convincingly.<\/p>\n

The only good news that came out of it was this top pick. It could help the Maple Leafs do a quick reset and move in the right direction in a hurry.<\/p>\n

Nylander and Knies certainly were aware of the implications immediately. They knew it was unlikely, and they surely in their minds know exactly the talent it could bring to town.<\/p>\n

It’s a cool aspect of modern technology that such a moment could be captured and shared with the entire Toronto fanbase, because in that sequence, Nylander and Knies felt quite a bit similarly to all the Maple Leafs fans.<\/p>\n

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More NHL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These 2 Maple Leafs stars had incredible reaction to draft lottery news originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5106],"tags":[1171,2626,766,5,20,5172,797,4,591,66,31,1725,5171,1114],"class_list":["post-584064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto-maple-leafs","tag-connor-hellebuyck","tag-draft-lottery","tag-gavin-mckenna","tag-hockey","tag-maple-leafs","tag-mapleleafs","tag-matthew-knies","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-draft-lottery","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-maple-leafs","tag-toronto-marlies","tag-torontomapleleafs","tag-william-nylander"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116640983540207429","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584064","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=584064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}