Comparing the NHL’s top Draft Lottery contenders after the Trade Deadline

Mar 12, 2026, 14:00 EDTUpdated: Mar 12, 2026, 11:46 EDT

Comparing the NHL’s top Draft Lottery contenders after the Trade Deadline

Credit: © Dan Rainville / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

With more than three-quarters of the 2025-26 NHL season in the books, the race for the first-overall pick is kicking into high gear.

Of course, it’s impossible to clinch the No. 1 (or No. 2) pick in the 2026 NHL Draft solely through losing games. Any team that hopes to select Gavin McKenna or Ivar Stenberg will need the lottery gods on their side.

The 2026 NHL Draft Lottery will be conducted on May 4. It will consist of two separate draws for the first and second picks, with the league’s non-playoff teams eligible to move up as many as 10 spots in the draft order. In the end, even the last-place finisher will only have a 25.5 percent chance of picking first overall.

As of March 11, 2026, only seven teams — five in the Western Conference, and two in the East — currently have points percentages of .500 or lower, thanks to the NHL’s strange “loser point” rule. With just more than a month of games left to play, here’s a look at how those seven teams stack up in the lottery race after the Trade Deadline.

Toronto Maple Leafs

Notable subtractions: Scott Laughton, Bobby McMann, Nic Roy
2025-26 record: 65 GP, 27-27-11, 65 points, .500 P%, 26th in NHL
Current odds of winning No. 1 pick: 6.5 percent

Sure, if the 2025-26 season ended today, the Leafs wouldn’t even keep their own 2026 first-round pick unless they won the draft lottery, thanks to their ill-advised trade to acquire Brandon Carlo from the Boston Bruins last year. But no list of the NHL’s top McKenna contenders is complete without the free-falling Buds, who have lost eight straight games while being outright dominated more often than not.

The Leafs have a pretty tough slate of opponents in their last 17 games, including the Dallas Stars, Carolina Hurricanes, Minnesota Wild and the surging Buffalo Sabres. If the Leafs keep playing as poorly as they have been, they genuinely might fall into the bottom three before the season is over. But compared to their other draft lottery contenders, the Leafs haven’t given up nearly as many core pieces, although they’re definitely still feeling the effects of losing Mitch Marner last summer. At this point, the main question should be whether Craig Berube and Brad Treliving are still part of this organization by the time the draft rolls around …

Winnipeg Jets

Notable subtractions: Logan Stanley, Luke Schenn, Tanner Pearson
2025-26 record: 63 GP, 26-27-10, 62 points, .492 P%, 27th in NHL
Current odds of winning No. 1 pick: 7.5 percent

Don’t look yet, but the Jets may wriggle their way out of true lottery contender status. They’ve picked up points in eight of their last 10 and have gotten a string of strong performances from Connor Hellebuyck, whose now-iconic turn at the 2026 Olympics seems to have emboldened him to lift the Jets out of the basement. And because the Western Conference is so much weaker than the East, the Jets have somehow gone from hovering around the bottom three to being just five points back of the Seattle Kraken for the second Wildcard playoff spot, seemingly in the blink of an eye.

The Jets haven’t subtracted nearly as much from their roster as some of their other lottery contenders. With all due respect to Stanley, who is having his best NHL season to date, he’s not a foundational piece and is much better suited as a luxury bottom-pairing option on a strong team like the Sabres. But most of the pieces that led the Jets to the Presidents’ Trophy last year are still here, save for Nikolaj Ehlers, who is doing his thing better than ever with the Hurricanes. The Jets could sorely use an infusion of youth to surround their aging core, but they might end up winning too many games down the stretch to have a real shot at McKenna or Stenberg.

St. Louis Blues

Notable subtractions: Brayden Schenn, Justin Faulk, Nick Bjugstad
2025-26 record: 64 GP, 25-29-10, 60 points, .469 P%, 28th in NHL
Current odds of winning No. 1 pick: 8.5 percent

The Blues are really bad. They don’t score very much, but they also have a nasty habit of blowing the few leads they do manage to build, as last demonstrated (in truly spectacular fashion) in their 4-3 overtime loss to the New York Islanders on Tuesday. That setback ended an improbable four-game winning streak for the Blues to begin the month of March, but they could regain a bit of their momentum with a relatively favorable schedule to finish the season — notwithstanding their game against the Hurricanes on Thursday.

In contrast with the rental-heavy market of previous years, more and more teams traded players with significant term at this year’s deadline, and the Blues were no exception. But even after moving Schenn and Faulk, most of the headlines around this team have related to the players they didn’t trade. Had the Blues actually been able to consummate deals for Robert Thomas and Colton Parayko, they’d be a much better bet to slide down the standings and make their first true lottery pick in two decades.

New York Rangers

Notable subtractions: Artemi Panarin, Carson Soucy, Sam Carrick
2025-26 record: 64 GP, 26-30-8, 60 points, .469 P%, 29th in NHL
Current odds of winning No. 1 pick: 9.5 percent

Again, with the Blueshirts, it’s all about the players they didn’t trade. Rangers GM Chris Drury might not be quite as unpopular with his team’s fans as Treliving is in Toronto, but he still got plenty of negative press, both locally and nationally, after failing to trade Vincent Trocheck at the absolute peak of his value. It’s hard to imagine the 32-year-old center ever being more highly sought-after than he was last week, with his performance at the 2026 Olympics still fresh in everyone’s minds, but the Rangers opted to decline every offer they received despite being a full 18 points outside a playoff spot.

Drury took care of his most pressing piece of business prior to the Olympic break, shipping Artemi Panarin off to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for a package almost universally seen as underwhelming. But if there’s one saving grace for Drury, it’s that Alexis Lafrenière has found a new gear ever since Panarin left. The 2020 No. 1 pick scored a hat trick on Tuesday to bring his point total to 13 in nine games since Jan. 31. It wouldn’t feel quite right if the Rangers won another lottery so soon after their last one, but it’d also be neat to give Lafrenière a real running mate.

Chicago Blackhawks

Notable subtractions: Nick Foligno, Jason Dickinson, Connor Murphy
2025-26 record: 64 GP, 24-29-11, 59 points, .461 P%, 30th in NHL
Current odds of winning No. 1 pick: 11.5 percent

The Blackhawks didn’t subtract as much from their roster as their fellow lottery contenders, but that’s primarily because they already did that aggressively in previous years. At this point, Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson has already torn this team down to the studs, and the veterans who remain on this team don’t have much trade value (otherwise, Davidson probably would’ve traded them, too).

Chicago is already much deeper in its rebuilding process than its lottery counterparts, having drafted Anton Frondell, Artyom Levshunov, and Connor Bedard with top-three picks in the last three drafts. One way or another, they’re going to get another top prospect this year. Even if they don’t win the lottery, the Hawks could really use one of the top defenders available in this year’s class, particularly with Levshunov still gradually adapting to the pace and skill level of the NHL and Kevin Korchinski struggling to escape the AHL. But you can also bet dollars to donuts that the league would love to see McKenna or Stenberg riding shotgun with Bedard in an Original Six market.

Calgary Flames

Notable subtractions: Nazem Kadri, MacKenzie Weegar, Rasmus Andersson
2025-26 record: 64 GP, 25-32-7, 57 points, .445 P%, 31st in NHL
Current odds of winning No. 1 pick: 13.5 percent

Since taking over as GM in Calgary back in 2023, Craig Conroy has traded virtually every valuable veteran player off of this Flames roster. He might not even be finished: Blake Coleman, Ryan Strome, and Morgan Frost all project to be highly sought-after pieces at the draft or next year’s deadline. But after trading Kadri, Weegar, and Andersson this season, Conroy has gotten through arguably the hardest part of a rebuild — actually committing to it. If not for the goaltending tandem of Dustin Wolf and Devin Cooley, the Flames might have the weakest roster in the NHL.

Barring something completely unexpected, the race for 32nd overall is already over (more on that in a moment), but the Flames are currently the best bet to finish second-last. They’ve got a brutally difficult final 18 games ahead of them, including three matchups against the league-leading Colorado Avalanche. With Kadri gone and Jonathan Huberdeau injured, the Flames’ top forward right now might be 20-year-old rookie Matvei Gridin. This is a Flames team that has never made a single top-three draft pick in their 46-year history in Calgary, and with their new arena set to open in 2027, they desperately need a superstar forward to rally around.

Vancouver Canucks

Notable subtractions: Quinn Hughes, Conor Garland, Kiefer Sherwood, Tyler Myers
2025-26 record: 64 GP, 19-37-8, 46 points, .359 P%, 32nd in NHL
Current odds of winning No. 1 pick: 25.5 percent

And that brings us to the Canucks, who will have a slightly better than one-in-four chance of landing the top pick in this year’s draft. Nobody is “catching” this team at the bottom of the standings. The Canucks are 1-6-3 in their last 10 and have won just six of 31 games at Rogers Arena in Vancouver this season. Like the Flames, the Canucks don’t have a single player with more than 15 goals this season, but they also don’t have a goaltender with a save percentage above .899.

The Canucks entered the 2025-26 season with one true superstar player and a bunch of question marks. Now, Quinn Hughes is in Minnesota and the question marks are bigger and more abundant than ever. Will Elias Pettersson ever regain his 102-point form? Can Thatcher Demko’s body handle the rigors of an NHL season? Can Zeev Buium or Tom Willander become Vancouver’s new top defenseman? And is one top draft pick enough to revitalize this team?

Although they got the Sedin twins at No. 2 and 3 in the 1999 NHL Draft, the Canucks have never picked first overall and have never won a draft lottery. Assuming they do finish last, there’s still a 56.3 percent chance that they slide all the way down from first to the third pick, almost certainly missing out on both McKenna and Stenberg in the process. It’d be just their luck.

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