Winners and Losers from the 2026 NHL Draft Lottery

For the third time in franchise history, the Toronto Maple Leafs will select No. 1 overall in the NHL Draft after winning the 2026 lottery on Tuesday night.

They moved up from the No. 5 spot with some lottery luck on their side, bumping the Vancouver Canucks out of the top spot. Even worse for the Canucks is that they also lost the second lottery drawing, as the San Jose Sharks made a huge jump up to the No. 2 overall spot, giving them a chance to add another young star to an already promising core.

The Canucks, owners of the NHL's worst record, will pick third overall.

The 2026 NHL Draft will take place on June 26 and 27, and it is widely anticipated that Penn State forward Gavin McKenna will be the top pick.

No matter who Toronto picks first, that player will follow in the footsteps of Toronto's previous No. 1 overall picks Wendel Clark (1985) and Auston Matthews (2016).

Now that we know who won the two draws on Tuesday and the first 16 picks of this year's draft, let's take a look at the rest of the winners and losers from Tuesday's drawing.

Winner: Toronto Maple Leafs

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The most obvious winner here.

This has been an absolutely hellacious season for the Toronto Maple Leafs, where absolutely nothing went right.

They had their worst season in a decade, went through another general manager change, are facing intense backlash and criticism for their newest front-office hires, and their best player and captain, Auston Matthews, has two years remaining on his contract and is basically telling the organization, "prove it to me" when it comes to winning and his future.

Ugly, ugly stuff.

Rancid vibes all around.

And then everything changed on Tuesday night with the lottery balls falling in their favor, with one of their combinations hitting to give them the top pick in the draft. It not only gives Toronto a chance to add a potential franchise cornerstone, but also allows it to keep its first-round pick this season instead of sending it to Boston.

The Maple Leafs will still have to send their 2027 and 2028 first-round picks to Boston and Philadelphia as part of last year's trades for Brandon Carlo and Scott Laughton, but that becomes a little easier to stomach when you get the No. 1 pick this year.

Those picks SHOULD be significantly lower than this pick.

If they are not, that means something went terribly, terribly wrong for the Maple Leafs. This creates an entirely new set of questions and problems.

Loser: Vancouver Canucks

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Canucks Team President Jim Rutherford

Just an absolutely cursed franchise at this point.

The Canucks have never won the Stanley Cup. They have never picked first overall. They have now moved down in the draft lottery seven times and never moved up. They finished this season with the worst record in the NHL, by a significant margin, and their reward for it is the No. 3 overall pick in the draft.

Can they still get a good player? Absolutely.

Will they? Probably!

Will it be as promising as one of the first two picks? Most definitely not.

Their rebuild is still underway and should continue, but this is a frustrating obstacle at the very beginning.

Winner: San Jose Sharks

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Sharks GM Mike Grier

This is about as good a year as a team can have without actually winning a trophy.

The Sharks improved by 19 wins, took a massive step in their rebuild to actually become competitive, have one of the best players in hockey in Macklin Celebrini, and were still rewarded in the lottery by moving up to the No. 2 overall pick in the draft.

It is the fourth consecutive year they have picked in the top four, and the third consecutive year they have picked in the top two.

Now they can add another elite prospect to a core that already includes Celebrini, Will Smith, and Michael Misa. They still have a ways to go before they can become a serious Stanley Cup contender, but the high-end talent you need at the top of the roster is going to be there. Now they get to keep adding to it.

Loser: Boston Bruins

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Bruins GM Don Sweeney

Even though the Bruins were in the playoffs this season, they still had their eyes on the lottery because, if Toronto had moved down to the No. 6 or 7 spot, its pick would have gone to Boston as part of last year's trade involving defenseman Brandon Carlo.

Not only did the Bruins not get that top-seven pick, but they also have to watch as a divisional rival gets a potential franchise-changing player.

Boston will still get an unprotected pick from Toronto in the future. While there is a lot of value in that, especially if Toronto can't get itself figured out this season, there is a good chance that pick will be significantly lower in the first round than this one could have been.

Winner: Draft Lottery Chaos

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Whether it is actually effective or not is certainly up for debate, but the whole purpose of the draft lottery is to try to prevent teams from simply tanking a full season, or even part of a season, to get the No. 1 overall pick in the draft.

There is an argument to be made that the lottery incentivizes some degree of tanking because it brings more teams into the mix for the No. 1 overall pick and might prevent bubble playoff teams from trying to make it.

But that is a different debate for a different day at this point.

The bottom line is that by having two different drawings and putting so many teams into the field, it does create its share of drama and chaos.

This is the second year in a row a team moved up from outside the top four to pick No. 1 overall.

It is the second year in a row that the league's worst team has picked third.

It is the second year in a row that both drawings were won by teams outside of the top four.

It may not be great for the teams that lose. But it is good for drama, chaos, and unpredictability.

Loser: The Other Top-5 Teams

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The day began with Vancouver, Chicago, New York, Calgary and Toronto with the five-highest lottery odds.

We already talked about how Vancouver was a loser and how Toronto was a winner, but the other three teams that started the day in the top-five were also big losers by moving down as far as they possibly could.

The Blackhawks went from No. 2 to No. 4, the Rangers went from No. 3 to No. 5, and the Flames went from No. 4 to No. 6.

Those are all pretty significant drops, at least based on what we know about those pick slots historically. Especially when compared to what the No. 1 and No. 2 picks generally do.

The Flames are significant losers simply because they need a difference-making player in their organization.

The Blackhawks have been picking high for a couple of years now, and despite that, they still need more impact players to build around Connor Bedard.

The Rangers just needed ... something.

None of them got what they needed. At least not on Tuesday.

Now, all of their chances of finding a star take a little bit of a hit going into the draft next month.