At the risk of jinxing things, I’m going to say that the Vancouver Canucks have last place in the bag.

With just 13 games remaining, the Canucks sit 13 points back of the next-worst team, the Calgary Flames. The Flames are closer to the playoffs — 10 points back of the Nashville Predators — than they are to the Canucks.

Barring a miracle, or whatever the opposite of a miracle is, the Canucks will finish in last place in the 2025-26 season, securing the best possible odds of winning the draft lottery for the first-overall pick.

Those odds still aren’t great. The Canucks will have a 25.1 per cent chance at picking first overall for the first time in franchise history, which is significantly better than whoever finishes 31st in the standings at 13.6 per cent. But the most likely result of the draft lottery, at a probability of 56.3 percent, is that the Canucks move down two spots and pick third overall.

It would be entirely fitting. The Canucks have a long, proud history of not picking first overall.

It dates back to the team’s origins in 1970, when they lost out on Gilbert Perreault to the spin of a carnival wheel. It continued on into the days of the modern draft lottery, where they have never won and repeatedly slipped down in the draft order instead.

As a result, the Canucks have never once picked first overall in the draft, though they did briefly hold the first-overall pick in the 1999 draft as part of the series of trades that led to Brian Burke picking Daniel and Henrik Sedin second and third overall. The Canucks would love nothing more than to hold and actually use the first-overall pick this year.

Instead, history could repeat itself.

Despite the Canucks’ embattled history, this will be just the second time that they’ve finished last in the NHL standings. The last time they finished last, guess where they picked in the draft? Yep, third overall.

The only other time the Canucks finished last was 54 years ago in the 1971-72 season, their second year in the league, edging out the Los Angeles Kings by one point.

By rights, this should have given the Canucks the first-overall pick. There was no draft lottery in those days, and the draft order went purely by the standings. Finish last; get the first-overall pick.

Unfortunately for the Canucks, the NHL expanded by two teams in 1972, adding the New York Islanders and Atlanta Flames. Just as the Canucks and Buffalo Sabres had when they joined the league two years earlier, the two expansion teams received the first- and second-overall picks.

That left the Canucks picking third. They did all right for themselves, selecting Don Lever, who would go on to be one of just two players from the 1972 draft to play 1000 games in the NHL. He was a solid pro and served as the fourth captain of the Canucks, who didn’t miss out on much, not getting Billy Harris or Jacques Richard, who went first and second.

Unfortunately, they missed out on Hall of Famer Steve Schutt, who went fourth overall right after the Canucks’ pick, but that’s neither here nor there.

It certainly would have been nice to pick first or second the previous year; however, as they would have gotten one of Guy Lafleur or Marcel Dionne. The Canucks were in position to pick second with five games remaining in their inaugural season, but then went 3-1-1 to pass the Detroit Red Wings by one point. The Red Wings got Dionne; the Canucks got defenceman Jocelyn Guevremont.

That’s some history that would be unpleasant to see repeated. Not that Gavin McKenna and Ivar Stenberg are equivalent to Lafleur and Dionne, but the Canucks missing out on a couple of franchise forwards and getting a good, but not great defenceman instead sounds like foreshadowing.

The Canucks picked third overall again in 1973, missing out on Hall-of-Famer Denis Potvin at first overall and top-tier star Tom Lysiak at second overall. But again, as in 1972, the real issue was who went after the Canucks’ pick. The Canucks got Dennis Ververgaert, who was fine enough, but missed out on another Hall-of-Famer Lanny McDonald, who went fourth overall to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

But they can at least take solace in their most recent third-overall pick: Henrik Sedin. If only Keaton Verhoeff had an identical twin brother.

Of course, just because something feels inevitable does not make it so. Third overall feels inevitable because Canucks fans have simply gotten used to such things failing to go their way. Heck, it’s even the most probable outcome, so math itself is stacked up against the Canucks.

But it’s just random chance, with no agenda or malevolence. And random chance has gone the Canucks’ way on occasion, such as Pavel Bure playing just enough games to qualify to be drafted by the Canucks, a single mistaken phone call giving the Canucks Alex Edler, or a puck banking off a stanchion to an open Kevin Bieksa.

Maybe the Canucks will get another bounce this May, and they’ll finally get the first-overall pick.