Canucks were one number away in draft lottery from getting Bedard

Just how close did the Vancouver Canucks come to getting Connor Bedard?

Turns out, pretty darn close.

The NHL draft lottery television show is a dramatic reveal of the top 16 picks, with deputy commissioner Bill Daly doing the honours.

The actual draft lottery is much less dramatic, held behind closed doors with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman overseeing the proceedings, after reading pages of rules and regulations.

A lottery machine containing 14 balls, numbered 1 to 14, draws four balls to decide the first overall pick. There were 1,001 possible four-number combinations, regardless of sequence.

The Canucks, who had just a 3% chance of winning the first overall pick, had 30 different number combinations — given to them randomly. By contrast, the Anaheim Ducks had 185 combinations.

The winning numbers were: 4, 5, 9, and 13.

One of the Canucks’ number combos included: 4, 5, 9… and 12.

Missed it by that much.

the winning #NHL draft combo was 4-5-9-13. #Canucks held 4-5-9-12… pic.twitter.com/HZ4lyZkOQr

— Jeff Paterson (@patersonjeff) May 9, 2023

They came darn close to winning the second draw too, which would have given them the No. 2 overall draft pick.

The winning numbers for the second pick were 6, 8, 9, 10. The Canucks had three of those numbers (6, 8, 10), but had 11, not 9.

Note that the order in which the balls are drawn does not matter.

Here’s a look at this year’s draft lottery:

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