Updated 5 Top Landing Spots for Potential No. 1 2024 NHL Draft Pick Macklin Celebrini

Updated 5 Top Landing Spots for Potential No. 1 2024 NHL Draft Pick Macklin Celebrini0 of 5

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It’s NHL Draft Lottery day and that means we’re about to find out which team will have the No. 1 pick and with it (more than likely) select Boston University forward Macklin Celebrini.

Celebrini is the consensus best player in this year’s draft and after watching him have an incredible freshman year at BU that included winning the Hobey Baker Award as college hockey’s best player, the hype is indeed real.

But the fun part about the lottery is that it’s not locked in stone that the NHL’s worst team this season, the San Jose Sharks, will get to pick him. Sure, they’ve got the best odds of landing the first pick at 18.5 percent, but that also means there’s an 81.5 percent chance it won’t be them. Fortunately for them, 18.5 percent are better odds than what each of the other 15 teams in the lottery have so they’ve got that going for them, which is nice.

But the fact remains that we’ll find out where Celebrini is going Tuesday night and some situations are more interesting than others and those are the ones we’re going to examine a little closer.

San Jose Sharks1 of 5

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The Sharks are bad.

They’ve been bad for a couple of years and they’ll be bad for another couple more years in the face beyond this no matter what. It’s grim, but help is coming with Boston College star Will Smith, college hockey’s leading scorer, coming eventually to help

Adding Celebrini to the mix to play with Smith would give the Sharks a fantastic set of building blocks that would be reminiscent of having Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton back in San Jose’s heyday.

The Sharks could use a break. They’ve dealt Timo Meier, Erik Karlsson and Tomáš Hertl away in the past two seasons and Logan Couture has been so banged up he’s barely played. Fans in San Jose are down bad and any of their younger players that have gotten NHL time lately haven’t had a lot of elite help once they got there.

If the Sharks can land Celebrini, the future won’t seem so bleak although GM Mike Grier will still have a lot of work to do to get his team out of the muck.

Chicago Blackhawks2 of 5

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Chicago is the elephant in the room when it comes to the lottery once again.

Everyone outside of Chicago was hoping they wouldn’t win the lottery to land Connor Bedard a year ago because, among other things, we’ve watched them be successful enough as it is.

Even with Bedard this season, they were still pretty dang bad, and they’ve again ended the season with the NHL’s second-worst record behind a team from California.

The thing is…Celebrini landing in Chicago to give them a one-two punch with Bedard and with Frank Nazar III, Kevin Korchinski, Alex Vlasic, and the host of other prospects they’ve got on the way, makes them a fascinating team. Even with all these young guys in place, Chicago is still not shaping up to be too good next season (at the moment at least), but they do become a much more interesting team for established players to want to play there.

Most everyone would hate seeing Chicago win the lottery again, no doubt, but Celebrini landing there would start the clock officially for when they become a league power for years to come once again.

Anaheim Ducks3 of 5

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The Ducks are building something really fun in Orange County and winning the lottery a year after getting skunked for the No. 1 pick would only fire things up even more.

Anaheim has a lot of fun young players with Leo Carlsson, Trevor Zegras, Pavel Mintyukov, Cutter Gauthier, Mason McTavish and Olen Zellweger. Adding Macklin Celebrini to this mix would make things way more interesting.

With Carlsson and Zegras up the middle and Celebrini joining them, suddenly the situation gets a bit more curious for Zegras’ future in Anaheim, too, considering there have already been trade rumors with him.

Watching guys like Carlsson and Mintyukov really show out has been fun and, with Gauthier, gives them a lot to work with next to veterans Troy Terry and Frank Vatrano.

Seeing the Ducks get a bit of luck on their side this year would seem justified in an unjust world after what happened a year ago, even though we know full well by now that the lottery cares not for our feelings.

Utah Hockey Club4 of 5

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Fun fact (depending on your idea of fun): The Arizona Coyotes never had the No. 1 pick in the draft.

Heck, the highest they ever picked was third (2007, 2015, 2022). The original Winnipeg Jets did have the first overall pick once and took Dale Hawerchuk, but that was two franchises ago.

Utah is starting brand new in its own way and, boy, wouldn’t it be fitting for the ping pong balls to go the way of the newest owners in the NHL? Never mind the conspiracy theories that would be written .4 seconds after it was announced, but consider how loaded the Utah roster would be with Macklin Celebrini.

You add the Hobey Baker winner to a roster with Clayton Keller, Logan Cooley, Matias Maccelli, Nick Schmaltz, and Logan Crouse and that forward group looks a lot more fun than it already is.

The Utah roster has its own needs but giving them a legit No. 1 overall talent to kick things off with in Salt Lake City would amp up the excitement even more. Not that they need it given the sky-high level of interest in the team already, but when you think about Vegas and Seattle and how they didn’t come pre-packaged with a No. 1 pick, Utah landing one right off the hop would be something else.

Pittsburgh Penguins5 of 5

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OK, hear us out and we’ll need a lot to make this happen.

But do you enjoy chaos? Do you enjoy watching the internet set ablaze? Do you like watching fans lose their minds and conspiracy theories run amok? Then you want to see the Pittsburgh Penguins get in a position to land Celebrini.

The Pens have to send this year’s first-round pick to the Sharks thanks to the Erik Karlsson trade…unless it’s a top-10 pick, then they’ll have the option to keep it or give it to San Jose.

Think of how annoyed everyone outside of Pittsburgh would be to see the Penguins be able to have Celebrini play alongside Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and learn all the tricks of the trade from two of the best players in recent memory.

The Pens are staring a hard future in the face with their superstars getting older and not a lot of prospect depth to work with right now. Landing Celebrini would ramp things up immediately for them and give the Pens the chance to rebuild on the fly.