Updated 5 Top Landing Spots for Potential No. 1 2024 NHL Draft Pick Macklin Celebrini
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It’s NHL Draft Lottery day and that means we’re about to find out which team will have the No. 1 pick and with it (more than likely) select Boston University forward Macklin Celebrini.
Celebrini is the consensus best player in this year’s draft and after watching him have an incredible freshman year at BU that included winning the Hobey Baker Award as college hockey’s best player, the hype is indeed real.
But the fun part about the lottery is that it’s not locked in stone that the NHL’s worst team this season, the San Jose Sharks, will get to pick him. Sure, they’ve got the best odds of landing the first pick at 18.5 percent, but that also means there’s an 81.5 percent chance it won’t be them. Fortunately for them, 18.5 percent are better odds than what each of the other 15 teams in the lottery have so they’ve got that going for them, which is nice.
But the fact remains that we’ll find out where Celebrini is going Tuesday night and some situations are more interesting than others and those are the ones we’re going to examine a little closer.
San Jose Sharks
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The Sharks are bad.
They’ve been bad for a couple of years and they’ll be bad for another couple more years in the face beyond this no matter what. It’s grim, but help is coming with Boston College star Will Smith, college hockey’s leading scorer, coming eventually to help
Adding Celebrini to the mix to play with Smith would give the Sharks a fantastic set of building blocks that would be reminiscent of having Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton back in San Jose’s heyday.
The Sharks could use a break. They’ve dealt Timo Meier, Erik Karlsson and Tomáš Hertl away in the past two seasons and Logan Couture has been so banged up he’s barely played. Fans in San Jose are down bad and any of their younger players that have gotten NHL time lately haven’t had a lot of elite help once they got there.
If the Sharks can land Celebrini, the future won’t seem so bleak although GM Mike Grier will still have a lot of work to do to get his team out of the muck.
Chicago Blackhawks
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Chicago is the elephant in the room when it comes to the lottery once again.
Everyone outside of Chicago was hoping they wouldn’t win the lottery to land Connor Bedard a year ago because, among other things, we’ve watched them be successful enough as it is.
Even with Bedard this season, they were still pretty dang bad, and they’ve again en