The NHL Draft Lottery, perhaps the biggest event on the San Jose Sharks’ calendar, will be held on May 7, the league announced Friday.
The lottery will take place at the NHL Network’s studio in Secaucus, N.J., studio and will be broadcast in the U.S. on ESPN, and on Sportsnet and TVA Sports in Canada. The NHL said a specific time for the lottery will be announced next week.
The lottery determines the selection order for the first 16 picks in the first round of this year’s draft. The teams in the lottery are the ones that did not qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs or the teams that have acquired the first-round drafting positions of those non-playoff teams.
The NHL uses a lottery to determine the first and second overall selections. A team can move up to 10 spots in the draft, so only the top 11 seeds are eligible to receive the first overall selection.
The Sharks (19-54-9), by finishing with the fewest points in the NHL with 47, have a 25.5% chance of winning the first lottery and selecting No. 1 overall.
The Sharks have an 18.5% chance of winning the lottery themselves and an added 7% chance of getting the first overall selection if any of the teams that finished 12th through 16th win the first drawing. The odds of those five teams winning add up to 7%.
The Sharks also have an 18.8% chance of drafting second and a 55.7% chance of drafting third. They have never drafted first overall.
After the first lottery draw, the odds for the remaining teams will increase proportionately for the second lottery draw, based on which team wins the first one.
The best player available in this year’s draft is center Mack Celebrini, the former Jr. Shark who won this year’s Hobey Baker Award as the top player in college hockey this season.
The 17-year-old Celebrini, a Vancouver native and the son of Dr. Rick Celebrini, the Warriors’ director of sports medicine and performance, had 64 points in 38 games in his freshman season at Boston University.
The Sharks also own a top-10 protected first-round draft pick from Pittsburgh as part of the trade that sent Erik Karlsson to the Penguins last August. Pittsburgh, seeded 14th, has a 1.5% chance of winning the lottery.
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If the Penguins do not move into fourth overall after next month’s lottery, the Sharks will take ownership of that selection, which will be 14th overall.
If they move up in the draft, the Penguins can keep that first-round draft pick and defer the pick they owe the Sharks to 2025. That pick would be unprotected.