The 2026 NHL Draft Lottery is set to take place on Tuesday night. The event will be televised, so fans and the media can see the results in real time. And New York Rangers fans will be paying close attention to the outcome.
As my colleague Tom Urtz, Jr. noted, the Rangers enter the Draft Lottery with an 11.5% of winning the first-overall pick. Those are the third-best odds in the field.
With such odds, the question begs: What happens if the Rangers win the NHL Draft Lottery?
That’s a fair question.
Winning the Draft Lottery would allow the Rangers to select the best player in the 2026 NHL Draft. At this point, the top pick resides with Gavin McKenna out of Penn State. However, a case could be made for some of the other highly talented players eligible for this year’s draft.
While that’s a conversation for another day, it’s worth exploring what would happen if New York walks away with the top pick.
Two possibilities could emerge. The first is just keeping the pick. The Blueshirts would have their choice of players to take. Doing so could allow the organization to rebuild on the fly, constructing a team around their new star prospect.
That process would not be quite so simple. If anything, it could resemble what the New York Islanders did this season with Matthew Schaefer.
The second path would be trading the pick. You would have to think that the Rangers could land a massive haul for the first-overall selection. That might not be the team’s initial inclination, but it does warrant exploration, given the motivation some clubs may have to either move up or get back into the first round.
Rangers could also fall back after NHL Draft Lottery
There’s also the possibility that the Rangers could fall back in the final NHL Draft order. The worst-case scenario would be the Blueshirts falling to fifth overall. That could happen as the most any team can fall back is two spots.
That’s a real possibility for the Rangers if another team that’s not the Vancouver Canucks or the Chicago Blackhawks wins the first two picks.
Regardless of where the Rangers ultimately end up in the draft order, the club will have the chance to land a potentially transformational player. The club will be looking to spark a turnaround next season.
And landing a highly talented player could provide it.
Of course, it’s tough to anoint a young player as a franchise savior. But then again, we’ve seen teenagers enter the league and go on a tear. Schaefer was one example. Macklin Celebrini of the San Jose Sharks is another.
At the moment, the Rangers’ first-round pick remains in a quantum state. It’s all of the above scenarios until the real situation unfolds on Tuesday night.
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