The Toronto Maple Leafs won the No. 1 pick at the 2026 NHL Draft in late June, leaping four spots during the 2026 NHL Draft Lottery on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
The Leafs entered the lottery, which was televised live and held at NHL Network Studios in Secaucus, N.J., with just an 8.5 percent chance of winning the No. 1 pick. The Leafs had the fifth-best odds of grabbing the top selection after finishing with the league\u2019s fifth-worst record in the 2025-26 regular season.<\/p>\n
The Leafs have only made two No. 1 picks: Wendel Clark in 1985 and Auston Matthews in 2016. Both went on to rank among the best players in franchise history.<\/p>\n
The San Jose Sharks, the Vancouver Canucks, the Chicago Blackhawks and the New York Rangers rounded out the top five, with the Sharks jumping from the ninth-best odds (5 percent) to No. 2 and further bumping down the other three teams.<\/p>\n
The Sharks will are poised to pick top two for the third straight draft, having selected Michael Misa at No. 2 last year and franchise center Macklin Celebrini at No. 1 in 2024. They finished this season only four points back of the Western Conference’s second wild card.<\/p>\n
The Canucks entered Tuesday’s lottery with the best odds of winning the top pick (25.5 percent), and were assured their first top-three selection since 1999 after they finished the 2025-26 regular season with the NHL’s worst record. Chicago held the second-best odds at 13.5 percent but fell to fourth, where the Blackhawks will continue a pattern dating to 2023 that has seen them take Conor Bedard (No. 1), Artyom Levshunov (No. 2) and Anton Frondell (No. 3) in consecutive seasons.<\/p>\n
The Rangers, who finished at the bottom of the Eastern Conference, held an 11.5 percent chance of winning, third-best in the league. As it is, New York is slated to make only its fourth top-five pick since 1970. The Calgary Flames, who will pick sixth, held the fourth-best odds at 9.5 percent but were denied their first top-three choice in franchise history.<\/p>\n
The Leafs were at risk of losing their first-round pick to the Boston Bruins if they fell outside of the top five selections. Former general manager Brad Treliving traded the team\u2019s 2026 first-round pick to the Boston Bruins at the 2025 NHL trade deadline as part of a package for defenseman Brandon Carlo. Treliving only secured top-five protection on the pick.<\/p>\n
The Leafs must now send first-round picks in the 2027 and 2028 drafts to Philadelphia and Boston. But by winning this year’s No. 1 pick, they have also become one of the most notable success stories in NHL Draft Lottery history.<\/p>\n
The New York Islanders moved up an incredible nine spots to win the 2025 lottery and select defenseman Matthew Schaefer. But generally, there is not a ton of movement among teams with the best odds. The Sharks retained their top spot in 2024 to pick Celebrini, as did the Montreal Canadiens with Juraj Slafkovsky in 2022. The Blackhawks moved from having the third-best odds in 2023 up to first overall, where they took Bedard.<\/p>\n
Now the Leafs have an opportunity to add a franchise-altering talent. Should the Leafs keep the No. 1 pick, the selection will immediately become their best prospect since Matthews was drafted in 2016.<\/p>\n
What it means for the Leafs<\/p>\n
The lottery win is a silver lining in an otherwise miserable Leafs season \u2014 and should help the new front office of GM John Chayka and senior executive adviser Mats Sundin begin to rebuild a roster for next season.<\/p>\n
The Leafs entered the 2025-26 season having won the Atlantic Division the previous year and had Stanley Cup aspirations. Instead, a poorly-constructed roster led to an epic collapse. The Leafs lost 26 of their final 34 games of the season, eliminating them from the playoffs and putting them in the lottery for the first time since 2020.<\/p>\n
Penn State winger Gavin McKenna is the presumed top pick. After logging 51 points in 35 games in his first NCAA season, the high-IQ playmaker could provide necessary offense to the Leafs and become a future linemate of Matthews.<\/p>\n
The Leafs could also consider Ivar Stenberg. The Swedish left winger and offensive wizard tallied 33 points in the SHL this season, the fifth-most ever by an 18-year-old in the top Swedish league and the most since Hall of Famers Daniel and Henrik Sedin in 1998-99.<\/p>\n
Otherwise, the Leafs could consider moving down in the draft to still add a high-end prospect while also bolstering their fledgling prospect pool with multiple other picks.<\/p>\n
The Leafs have only made two first-round picks in the previous five drafts: Ben Danford, taken 31st in 2024, and Easton Cowan, selected 28th in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Maple Leafs won the No. 1 pick at the 2026 NHL Draft in late June, leaping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[271,48,954],"class_list":{"0":"post-33651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-toronto","10":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33651","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=33651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}