There is no mystery about who will be taken No. 1 overall by the San Jose Sharks in the NHL Draft on Friday night at The Sphere in Las Vegas.
Macklin Celebrini of Boston University is a -20000 favorite to walk across the stage first.
But things could go in a hundred different directions from there, and that makes for good drama and even better betting.
What adds to the intrigue is the four teams that follow the Sharks in the draft — the Chicago Blackhawks, Anaheim Ducks, Columbus Blue Jackets and Montreal Canadiens — have each spent the last handful of seasons rebuilding and have terrific prospect pipelines.
So those teams could afford to take some risks and bring this thing off the rails.
With that in mind, we’ll dive into a few best bets that could make for a good sweat Friday evening.
No. 2 overall: D Zayne Parekh (150/1, bet365)
Most prospect rankings consider Ivan Demidov as the second-best prospect in this draft, but the consensus is the Blackhawks will bypass the Russian and fill an organizational need by drafting a defenseman.
They’ve got a franchise cornerstone center in Connor Bedard and he’ll soon be joined by fellow forwards Frank Nazar and Oliver Moore.
With that in mind, it makes sense that Artyom Levshunov is a prohibitive favorite to go No. 2 at -260 odds.
And while the Michigan State Spartan is a near-consensus top-five talent in this pool, there are a few forward-thinking prospect experts out there who have Parekh as the best defenseman in the draft, and the Blackhawks are the type of team to go after upside in this position.
It will likely be Levshunov, but the whispers about Parekh are enough to get me to bite on 150/1.
No. 3 overall: RW Ivan Demidov (+425, bet365)
The Ducks have one of the deepest prospect pools in the NHL and most of the headliners are forwards, but they’re also loaded on the blue line, so I think this ends up being a case where the team drafts the best player available rather than going after an organizational need.
That goes against the grain a bit as defensemen Anton Silyev (+120) and Levshunov (+260) are the favorites to go third, but I’d rather take double the price on a player who is widely regarded as second-best in this pool and is likely to still be there when Anaheim gets to the podium.
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No. 4 overall: D Artyom Levshunov (40/1, BetMGM)
This is an interesting situation.
It’s pretty hard to project the second and third picks in this draft, and yet we have the odds-on favorite at No. 2 available at 40/1 to go fourth to the Blue Jackets.
Cayden Lindstrom, a big-bodied center out of Medicine Hat in the WHL, is -185 to go to Columbus here, but that assumes that everything goes to plan in the first three picks and I don’t know how likely that is to happen.
If Levshunov does tumble, the Blue Jackets would scoop him up here.