Rasmus Dahlin sweepstakes heating up as NHL teams fall out of playoff race

While much of the NHL remains in the hunt to make the 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs, a handful of teams have already begun turning their attention toward the upcoming offseason and beyond. Things haven’t gone according to plan for the Coyotes, Sabres, Senators, and Canucks, so now comes the Rasmus Dahlin lottery.

There will always be tons of talent at the top of any NHL Draft, but this year, it’s all about Dahlin. The Swedish wunderkind defenseman is widely considered one of the best draft-year prospects in recent memory and a lock to be selected No. 1 overall, regardless of who is making the pick.

One NHL superstar can’t singularly transform a team’s fortunes like, say, an NBA franchise drafting LeBron James, but adding a player like Dahlin could be the missing piece to the rebuild for many teams. He’s only 17 years old and already set to star for Sweden at the 2018 Winter Olympics this month.

Whoever gets to pick Dahlin will have to win the draft lottery, though, which is far from a sure thing. Last year, the Devils leapt from No. 5 to the No. 1-overall pick despite having just 8.5 percent odds of doing so. The Avalanche, who finished 21 points behind the second-worst team in the league, got pushed down to the No. 4 pick.

Those results, along with the limited impact that one NHL player can make, have discouraged teams from outright tanking. The cost-benefit analysis isn’t the same as in the NBA, where one or two successful years of tanking can provide the cornerstones necessary to build a contender. It takes a lot more than a couple big hits to do the same with a 23-man roster in the NHL.

So teams like the Coyotes and Sabres made moves over the summer to try to make noise this season, only to find themselves right back in the chase for the lottery instead of the playoffs. However, if one of them lands Dahlin, another disappointing season will likely be worth it in the end.

Here’s how the lottery odds would stack up for the non-playoff teams if the season ended today. The NHL doesn’t announce an official breakdown of odds until later on, so these are estimates based off previous lotteries from Tankathon.com. The actual odds may be slightly different than what’s listed here, even if the order of teams is the same.

The Coyotes had shown some signs of better performance in January, but they’ve been outscored, 10-1, in two losses to open February. That’s actually good for their chances of drafting Dahlin because the Sabres had begun closing that gap with their own struggles. There’s no greater gap in lottery odds than the one between the No. 1 and No. 2 teams, so there’s a lot at stake for whoever finishes 30th vs. 31st.

For any of the teams at the bottom of the standings, adding Dahlin would be a game-changer. The Coyotes have talented pieces like Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Jakob Chychrun, and Clayton Keller, but they’re still floundering despite GM John Chayka’s best efforts. The Sabres could use a real cornerstone defenseman instead of wishing that Rasmus Ristolainen would take a grand leap forward. The Senators could use an heir apparent to Erik Karlsson. The Canucks need top blue line prospects beyond Olli Juolevi.

In terms of the bigger picture of the NHL, this is going to be one of the most important races of the season. Obviously there’s a lot weighing on making the playoffs, particularly after the eighth-seeded Predators nearly won the Cup last spring, but some team is going to have its fortunes change in a big way this offseason.

Even if it’s not the LeBron-like seismic shift that’s happened in other sports, teams like Arizona, Buffalo, and Vancouver have spent years trying to break out of mediocrity. For one of them, Dahlin could be the catalyst to finally bring about meaningful improvement.