NHL Draft Lottery mayhem: Maple Leafs get a gift and Canucks get punched in the face in chaotic start to NHL offseason

But will the Maple Leafs waste it? Is there a more cursed franchise than the Vancouver Canucks? Also looking at the NHL Draft lottery and the havoc it can cause on the league and rebuilds.

Even though we are still in the meaty part of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the NHL offseason is already underway for most of the teams in the league. That includes the 15 teams that were in Tuesday night’s NHL Draft Lottery.

It was a fascinating lottery going in because there were a lot of teams that, had they won, would have infuriated large groups of hockey fans.

Florida? The rich don’t need to get richer. They’re going to be just fine next season. They don’t need the help.

Chicago? Come on. Only Blackhawks fans wanted to see that. Literally nobody else did.

The Rangers? Potentially funny just because you would have people saying it’s rigged to get a star in New York (it’s not rigged). I am not even sure Rangers fans thought the current organization and front office was deserving of that sort of a bailout.

Toronto? That would also just be funny for the chaos of it all, and also because a lot of people would argue that it is rigged (I repeat: It’s not rigged).

There were also a lot of teams that REALLY needed some lottery luck on their side.

The Vancouver Canucks were the worst team in the league (and had the best lottery odds as a result) with one of the grimmest outlooks in the league. They needed this.

Calgary and Seattle are just …. bland and stale and need some star power.

In the end, it was one of the funny options as Toronto went from No. 5 up to the No. 1 overall spot. It continued what has already been an insane — and somewhat surreal — week for the NHL’s biggest attention-seeking franchise.

That result, combined with San Jose jumping up to the No. 2 overall pick in a 39-win season, means the Canucks dropped from the No. 1 spot all the way down to No. 3, continuing what has been a consistently cursed existence. If there was a team in the NHL that needed this No. 1 overall pick, it was Vancouver. And instead of getting that pick, it ended up getting punched in the face.

Again.

It might not even be the biggest face-punch their fans get this offseason.

Let’s talk about both teams, how they got here, the impact of the lottery on rebuilds, and where these teams potentially go from here.