Lady Luck was not on the Winnipeg Jets’ side at the NHL Draft Lottery. Now the club must decide if it wants to lean into the idea that fortune favours the bold.
The Jets finished seventh from the bottom in the league standings, but are left with pick No. 8 after the San Jose Sharks — who finished ninth from the bottom — jumped up and snagged the second-overall pick by virtue of winning the second lottery draw on Tuesday night.
Now the Jets are, in top-10 terms anyway, officially in no man’s land at No. 8. Lord knows you can find a fantastic player there, but you’re unlikely to draft somebody who is going to help you next October the way you could have with a lottery win. Really, anybody you take this year probably doesn’t help the team in a meaningful way until at least 2027-28.
That’s fine for the type of rebuilding team you typically find inside the top 10 of the draft, but Winnipeg is in win-now mode. And the heat definitely went up a degree or two when franchise goalie Connor Hellebuyck said, “What we did this year is unacceptable” at his year-end media availability, leaving no doubt he’s not satisfied with the current state of the team.
So where does Winnipeg go from here?
On one hand, the Jets haven’t picked as high as eighth since 2016, when the team selected Patrik Laine at No. 2. Winnipeg has sent some picks and prospects out the door at recent trade deadlines, and the chance to add a titillating item to the prospect cupboard would certainly be welcome.
Heck, in the team’s relatively recent past, they’ve found Nikolaj Ehlers (ninth overall in 2014), Jacob Trouba (ninth in 2012) and Mark Scheifele (seventh in 2011) in and around that eighth pick.
The 2026 field is considered strong inside the top 10, and there’s definitely an opportunity to land a serious player. Sportsnet’s Sam Cosentino had the likes of Swedish dynamo Viggo Bjorck — an undersized forward who was fantastic while winning gold at the 2026 World Junior Championship — and big Latvian defender Alberts Smits — who has already gone up against the best players in the world at the Olympics — as players potentially on the board when Winnipeg’s brass would be strolling up to the podium. If the Jets are making the selection, it certainly feels like a true best-player-available scenario.
But, again, good as any player you snag there may ultimately be, they’re probably not helping improve Hellebuyck’s outlook about the franchise any time soon, as a team that finished first overall one season ago looks to get back to that lofty perch.
There’s actually an interesting dynamic at the end of the top 10 with Winnipeg holding the eighth pick and the Florida Panthers — who won the Cup just 11 months ago — slotted to pick at No. 9.
You could see both those clubs valuing immediate help over a good prospect as they both aim to regain contender status for 2026-27. What may separate the teams, though, is the fact Florida — depending on what happens with pending-UFA goalie Sergei Bobrovsky — doesn’t have a glaring need at any one position when everybody is healthy.
The Jets, however, have a long-running issue with regard to the fact that they just have not been able to find a strong, sustainable fit at second-line centre.
If you’re really going out there with that kind of player on your shopping list, the eighth-overall selection would be a great chip in a potential deal.
It’s certainly uncommon for a top-10 pick to be moved ahead of the draft once the order has been locked in, but we have seen a couple examples this decade. In 2022, the Ottawa Senators surrendered the seventh pick in a swap to get Alex DeBrincat from the Chicago Blackhawks. The year prior, the Arizona Coyotes acquired the ninth pick from Vancouver for a package that included defenceman Oliver Ekmann-Larsson and Conor Garland.
The Coyotes used that selection to take Dylan Guenther, who’s now a stud for the franchise in Utah, while Ekmann-Larsson and Garland are no longer part of a Canucks organization that had the misfortune of falling to No. 3 on Tuesday night despite having the best odds of picking first.
As always, nothing is guaranteed in life or hockey.
Still, it’s undeniably a unique situation to have a hockey team with high aspirations, a clear need at a prime spot, recent proof-of-concept that it can be a very good club and the bullet of a top-10 pick to shop on a trade market that’s expected to be quite active this summer.
Chances are, Winnipeg will leave the late-June draft in Buffalo with a shiny new toy that can help down the road. But it certainly makes sense to explore all options before handing a Jets sweater to a teenager, no matter how talented.
