Where will Vancouver pick? And what’s with the format for announcing the results?

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While the second round of the NHL playoffs rages on, tomorrow night will be more about the bottom teams in the league rather than those still in the hunt.

Yes, there are two games on Saturday, with the Tampa Bay Lightning hosting the Boston Bruins and the Vegas Golden Knights seeking to build on their 7-0 shellacking of the San Jose Sharks.

But for a majority of NHL fan bases, Saturday night will be about something else: hope.

The NHL Draft Lottery is scheduled (terribly, we might add, but we’ll get to that later) before and during the Vegas/San Jose game, which starts at 5 p.m. PST.

It’s the moment Vancouver Canucks fans have been waiting for since about 15 games into the season when it became apparent that the boys in green and blue wouldn’t be playing meaningful games in April (or January for that matter).

However, it’s all a bit tainted by the late season, Sedin-propelled run the Canucks made to end the season, finishing sixth-last in the league instead of a bottom-three placement that at one point felt realistic.

Here are a few of our thoughts.

Don’t get your hopes up

Not like we need to remind Canucks fans, but since the draft lottery was introduced in 2016 to stop the Edmonton Oilers from stockpiling and then ruining first overall picks, the Vancouver Canucks have fallen a collective five spots, picking fifth twice in a row after finishing third and second-last respectively.

If you go back further, the bad luck continues. As an expansion team, Vancouver lost a roulette wheel spin for the right to draft future Hall of Famer Gilbert Perreault. They ended up with a serviceable defenceman in Dale Tallon.

There won’t be any surprised faces if the lottery doesn’t go the Canucks way on Saturday. A finish outside of the top three will result in sarcastic eye rolls and exhausted shrugs.

After all, Vancouver has a 7.5 percent chance of getting awarded first pick and a 23.3 percent chance of picking in the top three. The most likely position the Canucks will draft from? Seventh. Even though they finished sixth-last.

OK screw it, get your hopes up

We say this every year, but…maybe this is the year? Maybe when the team desperately needs a stud defenceman they’ll hit gold? Maybe after a contentious extension for GM Jim Benning the Canucks win the draft lottery and put the rebuild on the fast track, rendering the whole discussion around Benning mostly irrelevant? Maybe drafting Rasmus Dahlin will incentivize the Canucks to trade Chris Tanev at the draft? Hey, one can dream.

Saving the best for last

As if it weren’t enough to televise deputy commissioner Bill Daly flipping signs while executives from the NHL’s worst teams look on, trying not to show any emotion, the league has decided to draw the process out.

Indeed, the teams placing from 15 to four in the draft order will be announced at 4:30 p.m. PST, before the Golden Knights host the Sharks. And then, the remaining three teams will be announced during the second intermission of the same game.

We’ve never been actually tortured, and we don’t want to make light of what that must be like, but come on. The NHL is so intent on squeezing every dollar out of its product that it has to give fans an incentive to watch probably the best story in sports in Vegas? Have a little faith.

Linden, Benning or Fin?

After sending team president Trevor Linden two years in a row, the Canucks will try their luck with Benning. The team reportedly asked the NHL if they would be able to send team mascot Fin to represent Vancouver instead. Gary Bettman and co. obviously nixed that call, which is too bad.

It would have been at least somewhat entertaining to see Fin make a mockery out of an event that 12 fan bases will curse to the heavens anyway.

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