It's a 5 Team Race to the Bottom in the Final 40 Games

The Chicago Blackhawks just completed a very successful 7 game homestand, picking up 8 points in that span. Success is an interesting word when it comes to our team though. Growth / development, attendance, the way we handle the eventual Kane and Toews departures? Nope, none of that.

If you browse ad nausea twitter and social media you will find only one thing at the top of everyones' mind: Connor Bedard. We are losing to get him. When he is here, we can speed up the rebuild. Matthews would sign with us when he plays in Chicago... On and on.

This is unlikely to happen. The odds say it, history says it, and my gut feeling says it. While certainly a 25.5% chance to select Connor Bedard is really all you can ask for, there is still 3 out of 4 (just about) times you are selecting Adam Fantilli, Lucas Carlsson, or Matvei Michkov (Zach Benson, Will Smith, Dalibor Dvorsky also considered).

In a post I made on realgm.com, 4 months ago I previewed the draft and the teams that could potentially be drafting high. While hindsight is 20/20 I can say I did quite well projecting the players and teams top to bottom even before alot of the players were in place or before alot of prospects were playing:

You can view the old post here if curious. I predicted the San Jose Sharks would win the lottery and select Bedard. I based this mainly on their lack of depth and a new GM looking to gain assets by trading their best player in Timo Meier.

Credit to www.realgm.com for housing my long and detailed posts for nearly 20 years.

As the season enters a busier rumor cycle there appears to be a true 5 team race towards the bottom of the league: Chicago, Arizona, Columbus, San Jose, and Anaheim. The way the odds work this year that would make it a 68.5% chance that Connor Bedard is a member of one of those teams.

This also means that the next 6 teams do have a legitimate chance at moving up (31.5%) to select a generational talent like Bedard. Currently that would be a pool of Vancouver, Montreal x2 (10%), Ottawa, Philadelphia, and Detroit.

That means at the present there are only 10 teams that Connor Bedard could potentially play for. Which one of these teams will start to trade pieces early to help catch up on those bottom 5? Which bottom 5 team will magically have a bevy of phantom injuries? It will certainly be entertaining, with much fan-fare, to watch this all unfold.

It will all go by so slow, 6 weeks to the deadline, 85 more days until the last game of the season, however make no mistake... this is a race.