Canucks officially guaranteed a chance to win draft lottery and select Connor Bedard

Do you believe?

As of Monday night, the Vancouver Canucks are now guaranteed a chance at winning the draft lottery and being given the opportunity to select Connor Bedard.

Thanks to the Ottawa Senators beating the Carolina Hurricanes, along with the Canucks losing to the Los Angeles Kings in regulation, Vancouver now cannot fall out of a bottom 11 spot in the league standings, meaning they will have a chance at winning the lottery and jumping up to first overall.

The draft lottery rules were changed recently to prevent the league’s 12-16 lowest ranked teams — clubs that just missed the playoff bar — from jumping all the way up to the first overall spot.

With their recent surge of winning hockey, the Canucks were certainly at risk of ending up in this dreaded territory. But fear not Canucks fans, they’ll have shot, albeit a slim one.

Right now, the Canucks are guaranteed to finish between 22nd and 25th. Vancouver currently sits below the Washington Capitals on tiebreaker, one point behind the Detroit Red Wings, and two below the St. Louis Blues with two games to go on the season. If they hold their current position of 25th in the standings, they’d have a 6% chance at drafting Bedard. If they drop to 22nd, those odds drop to 3%.

The draft lottery hasn’t been particularly kind to the Canucks, as they have moved down in the lottery every year since 2016. Thankfully, the events of the draft days since have been much kinder to the club, as the Canucks managed to draft both Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes in years in which they moved down in the draft order.

If there’s any year for the hockey gods to turn the Canucks’ draft lottery luck around, it’s this one.

The draft lottery takes place on May 8th at 5 PM Pacific.