Welcome Matt: Canucks now in a tank battle with four other terrible teams

I’m afraid it’s once again time to separate the tankists from the draftists.

We’ve done this before in BC because our NHL team has this annoying habit of winning streaks at the end of seasons (after the playoffs are lost, of course) and crushing most hope of landing the first (or second) overall draft pick.

That’s the apple in tankists’ eyes. They want loss after loss, sinking like a stone down the NHL standings as low as possible.

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It was always going to be difficult for the Canucks to sink to those depths this season.

San Jose, Chicago, and Anaheim are just so incredibly bad in the Western Conference. Ditto Columbus back east.

Instead, the final 15 games are about finishing below Arizona, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Montreal in the overall league standings. Not just to give the Canucks the best odds at North Vancouver wunderkind Connor Bedard, but to secure the floor of that first-round pick.

This is where the draftists reside.

They’ve given up on securing a top pick, they just want the pick to be as high as possible, especially in this 2023 draft which evaluators say is an exceptional class.

Going into Friday play, Vancouver is eighth from the bottom with a 6% chance to win the first overall selection, and a 54.4% chance of picking eighth. Those odds come as a slight improvement to where the Canucks were before Thursday’s 3-2 loss in Arizona, which dropped them below St. Louis in the standings, and above the Blues in lottery odds.

Canucks currently have a 6% chance at Connor Bedard.

The Canucks are not going to (ahem) catch the league’s cellar dwellers but they can move into the fifth best odds for Bedard, an 8.5% chance that currently rests with Montreal. Finishing in that spot would mean Vancouver selects no worse than seventh overall, and has 44.2% chance of picking sixth with a 24.5% chance of picking fifth.

That’s the best the Canucks can do, and for fans who feel queasy rooting against their team, the alternative is cheering hard — not for Bedard — but for the Blues, Coyotes, Flyers, and Canadiens as if they’re your own.