Brian HedgerColumbus Dispatch
Fourth it is.
According to the the NHL's draft lottery results released Tuesday in Secaucus, New Jersey, that’s where the Blue Jackets will pick in this year’s NHL draft ― which is set for late June at Sphere in Las Vegas. Despite 16 teams holding 1,000 different four-number combinations to determine the first two picks, the draft order didn’t have a single team move up or down from the league’s reverse standings to conclude the regular season.
More: Blue Jackets Adam Fantilli returning home after being bumped from Canada's worlds roster
The San Jose Sharks pick first and will be expected to select Boston University center Macklin Celebrini, a 17-year old winner of the Hobey Baker Award as college hockey’s top player.
"We've just got to get to work," Blue Jackets president of hockey operations/interim general manager John Davidson said. "We're going to have our amateur staff in (for meetings) early June, and we'll have a number of days of intense meetings about who we're looking to pick. We're just going to get our job done and deal with what we were dealt, and go to work. It's exciting."
The Chicago Blackhawks will pick second, after selecting Connor Bedard first last year. The Anaheim Ducks, Blue Jackets and Montreal Canadiens round out the top five. Columbus dropped to 0-11 in lottery draws thatcould've landed the first overall pick. The Jackets selected Rick Nash first overall in 2002, but that wasafter moving into the top spot via trade.
Nash is now the Jackets' director of player development and is directing Canada's roster for the upcoming world championship as Hockey Canada's GM.
"San Jose worked hard to get the No. 1 pick and they got it, so good on them," Davidson said. "For everybody else, now we know where we pick. We're going to figure out what players are going to be available at two, three, four and get who we think is the best one of those that's left. It is what it is. It's disappointing. You'd love to get No. 1, but nothing was out of whack today."
Going into this year's draft, the Blue Jackets have seven picks. They'll have to make a decision at the end of the first round whether to keep their second-round pick, 36th overall, or send it to the Philadelphia Flyers to complete a trade for defenseman Ivan Provorov last summer. The Jackets' other picks are their own selections in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth rounds plus the Los Angeles Kings' pick in the third round (86th overall).
This lottery "loss" means Celebrini, who’s comparable to Blue Jackets rookie Adam Fantilli, will not join an impressive stable of Blue Jackets prospects — barring a trade or unexpected drop. There will still be highly ranked players available with the fourth pick, which means the Blue Jackets’ amateur scouting department ― co-led by Trevor Timmins and Ville Siren — is now on the clock for hashing out draft rankings.
Once the Blue Jackets settle on a replacement for Jarmo Kekalainen in the general manager’s seat, which still doesn't have a timeline, that new voice will join discussions. Options to consider drafting fourth include Michigan State defenseman Artyom Levshunov, Russian center Ivan Demidov, Medicine Hat power forward Cayden Lindstrom and London Knights defenseman Sam Dickinson.
In what’s becoming an annual tradition with the NHLlottery, the league again failed to get throughit without a controversy online.Last year, it was ESPN studio analyst Kevin Weekes prematurely announcing that Bedard wouldn’t be going to Columbus. This time, ESPN’s John Buccigross tweeted and then deleted a photo of the studio mid-afternoon Tuesday that showed a draft order arranged with the Sharks getting the first pick and the NHL’s new Utah franchise (formerly the Arizona Coyotes) moving up four spots into the second pick.
The Blackhawks, Ducks and Blue Jackets all dropped one spot in that scenario. In reality, San Jose did win the actual draw and Utah stayed in the sixth slot. Buccigross deleted his tweet shortly after posting, and tweets from multiple NHL reporters circulated on Twitter/X saying that ESPN’s board in the photo was merely afictionallist used inrehearsals for the show. A couple hours later, tweets emerged from reporters who witnessed the draw at NHL Network’s headquarters that showed the lottery machine, NHL deputy GM Bill Daly and others waiting for Bettman to conduct the draw.
Other NHL lottery controversies occurred in 2005 to determine the selection order that gave Sidney Crosby to the Pittsburgh Penguins, a team that had filed bankruptcy, and in 2020 during an awkwardly altered draw to account for a COVID-19 shortened season.
Losing teams from the qualifying round of the 2020 postseason were included in a second draw to gain the first pick, after the league decided to hold its first draw using placeholders to represent those teams.The New York Rangerswon the second draw, taking ownership of the generic winning "placeholder" pick to select left wing Alexis Lafreniere.
That lottery prompted rules changes.
Since 2021, teams haveonly been allowed to move up a maximum of 10 places or slide back a maximum of two spots. This year’s draft order didn’t have any moves, including the Blue Jackets. They now have a high draft position for the fourth straight year. They'll pick fourth after picking third last year (Fantilli), sixth and 12th in 2022 (David Jiricek, Denton Mateychuk), plus fifth and 12th in 2021 (Kent Johnson, Cole Sillinger).
"We'll just have to sit in our meetings and figure out who is going to be the best player for our organization," Davidson said. "We do have a lot of young players, so that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to draft somebody who's going to come play here right away. If not, you let them go and get ripe in Cleveland or wherever they're playing. It's such an unknown that we're just going to have a hard look at it, figure out who we want to take and then just go with it."
bhedger@dispatch.com
