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Connor McDavid of the OHL’s Erie Otters will be the top-ranked North American prospect at this year's NHL draft. He leads the league with 11 goals and 23 points in nine postseason games.Peter Power/The Canadian Press

It was a brief moment of levity during a tense news conference for Brendan Shanahan, who was carefully detailing why he had cleared out the Toronto Maple Leafs front office a day earlier.

Asked what getting top prospect Connor McDavid would do for the Leafs president's fledgling rebuild, the typically staid Hall of Fame player couldn't keep the smile off his face.

"It would certainly speed things up," Shanahan said, before interrupting the next question a moment later with "I'm sorry – I'm still smiling at that last one."

On Saturday night at Sportsnet's TV studio during Hockey Night in Canada's playoff coverage, the Leafs will find out if that's more than merely a pipe dream.

The NHL's draft lottery will give 14 teams a shot at the first overall pick this June, a selection that is guaranteed to be used to claim McDavid, the Erie Otters' 18-year-old superstar who is currently piling up points in the OHL playoffs. (He leads the league with 11 goals and 23 points in nine postseason games.)

The Buffalo Sabres, by virtue of finishing dead last in a calculated tank job, will have the highest chance of getting McDavid at 20 per cent, but the two playoff-less Canadian teams – Edmonton and Toronto – are among the top four.

The Oilers have an 11.5-per-cent chance of winning the lottery and moving to first from third.

The Leafs are right behind at 9.5 per cent and would go to first from fourth.

There is also a reasonable chance a team comes out of nowhere and gets McDavid. All 14 non-playoff teams are eligible to win the lottery, and the six clubs with the lowest chance include some previously powerhouse teams such as San Jose, Los Angeles and Boston.

Combined, the bottom six – which also include prospect-loaded teams Colorado, Dallas and Florida – have a 17-per-cent chance of winning the lottery.

(Teams ranked beyond the bottom five have only won it three times, but their odds have also historically been lower than they will be this season, a change the NHL made to curb the tanking that appeared rampant this year. In addition to the Sabres, both Arizona and Toronto entered a death spiral over the season's final few months.)

The NHL has held the draft lottery at the end of every season for the past 20 years, but this will be one of the most anticipated.

Not only have bottom feeders such as Buffalo been given a lower chance of winning, increasing the drama, but McDavid represents a franchise-changing talent, a potential Sidney Crosby-like superstar who can transform a hard-luck case into a champion.

By way of comparison, McDavid had 120 points in 47 games – or 2.55 points a game – with the Otters this season, despite missing games because of a broken hand.

Crosby's points a game in his draft year (2005) were only slightly higher at 2.71.

The Penguins were on life-support in Pittsburgh before winning that lottery, needing a new building and to reignite their fan base after three awful seasons. Getting Crosby, along with Evgeni Malkin a year earlier at second overall, helped them become a powerhouse franchise that made a trip to the finals three years later and won the Stanley Cup in 2009.

That's the kind of rebirth that Shanahan and other executives are dreaming of these days, especially in places such as Arizona, which desperately needs an infusion of talent and good fortune.

Not to mention all of the revenue someone as talented as McDavid can bring through jersey sales, bums in the seats and playoff games.

"Some organization will get a whole lot smarter," Oilers general manager Craig MacTavish said. "After the lottery."

Not exactly. But they'll certainly be better, and it'll be thanks to random chance.

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