Top 3 ways the NHL 2024 Draft Lottery hurt the Blackhawks

It wasn’t the news we were hoping for, as the Chicago Blackhawks weren’t fortunate enough to win the NHL Draft Lottery, which would have given them the top pick for the second season in a row. While they walked away with the second-overall pick and a stellar chance to land a future star, we know it won’t be Macklin Celebrini, and this one will sting in both the short and long run. 

Before taking a deep dive into this, I will say that Connor Bedard will nonetheless play a pivotal role in turning this team around in time, as will whomever they take with the second pick. But a Celebrini-Bedard combo would have comprised a pair of first-overall picks taking center stage in expediting a rebuilding project for an organization that has fallen back into the dark ages lately. 

Let’s take a deeper dive into why the lack of a Celebrini-Bedard combo hurts the Hawks this year before checking out two more reasons the NHL Draft Lottery hampered the organization. 

No Macklin Celebrini-Connor Bedard combo brings a myriad of small setbacks

The good news is - and I can’t stress it enough - that the Blackhawks still have the second-overall pick and that means they will still have an outstanding player coming to the organization. Someone like Ivan Demidov will make a great complement to Bedard, but he will play another season in Russia before coming over to North America. 

Regardless of whether the second pick is Demidov, Artyom Levshunov, Cayden Lindstrom, Anton Silyayev, or if someone else surges through the rankings over the next few weeks, a Macklin Celebrini-Connor Bedard combo would have been historic from Day 1. 

This would have entailed a pair of sensational talents playing for one of the league’s most storied franchises. Such a situation wouldn’t have just been sensational not only for the Hawks but for the NHL. A Celebrini-Bedard combo also could have worked in so many ways, as they could have lined up alongside one another with one playing wing, on separate lines, or even in a combination. 

We would have seen a pair of elite talents in their late teens setting the foundation for an incredible run that would have begun at the back half of the decade. This one hurts, even if a solid talent would still eventually wind up in Chicago.