{"id":33507,"date":"2026-05-05T23:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T23:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/33507\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T23:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T23:58:07","slug":"toronto-maple-leafs-win-the-lottery-for-the-no-1-pick-in-the-2026-nhl-draft-wral-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/33507\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto Maple Leafs win the lottery for the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NHL draft :: WRAL.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SECAUCUS, N.J. (AP) \u2014 The Toronto Maple Leafs have won the lottery for the first pick in the NHL draft. <\/p>\n<p>The victory comes at a critical time for Toronto in the aftermath of hiring John Chayka as general manager and bringing back franchise legend Mats Sundin to serve as a hockey operations adviser. <\/p>\n<p>The future of captain and best player Auston Matthews is the biggest question after missing the playoffs for the first time in his career. It&#8217;s the first time the Maple Leafs have won the lottery since taking Matthews with the No. 1 pick in 2016. <\/p>\n<p>They had the fifth-highest odds of winning it at 8.5%. Vancouver had the highest at 18.5% and has never had the first pick in the draft. Toronto would have had to transfer its pick to Boston to complete a trade last year for Brandon Carlo had it not been in the top five. <\/p>\n<p>The Bruins and Philadelphia as a result will get the Leafs&#8217; first-rounders in 2027 and &#8217;28. For this draft, Penn State\u2019s Gavin McKenna and Swedish winger Ivar Stenberg are rated as the top North American and European prospects by NHL Central Scouting. <\/p>\n<p>The San Jose Sharks won the lottery for the second pick.<\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SECAUCUS, N.J. (AP) \u2014 The Toronto Maple Leafs have won the lottery for the first pick in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[7013,1111,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-33507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto","8":"tag-ap-sports","9":"tag-associated-press","10":"tag-toronto"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}