u/jambajew42

The Sharks have several draft picks from other teams in this year's draft. They have Edmonton's first round pick, Colorado's second round pick, Vegas' and Florida's fourth round picks, Montreal's fifth round pick, and Columbus' sixth round pick.

TLDR: The optimal for our draft purposes is LA, either Utah or Anaheim, Boston, and any team other than Carolina in the Metro for the playoffs (Philly/Pittsburgh/Ottawa) reach their respective conference final. Beyond that, it doesn't matter and you can continue to not much like LA or whatever other teams.

Florida and Columbus aren't in the playoffs so those picks are set. Unless a team has a compensatory pick I'm not aware of, Florida's fourth round pick will be 104th overall and Columbus' sixth round pick will be 174th overall.

The draft order for the first round is:

• 1 to 16: Non-playoff teams (reverse order of the standings aside from the lottery)
• 17 to between 23 and 28: Teams eliminated in the first or second round of the playoffs that did not win their division in the regular season, excluding Ottawa (reverse order of the standings)
• Between 24 and 28: Teams eliminated in the first or second round of the playoffs that won their division in the regular season, excluding Ottawa (reverse order of the standings)
• 29 and either 28 or 30: Teams that lose in the conference final, excluding Ottawa (reverse order of the standings)
• 30 or 31: The team that loses in the Cup Final, excluding Ottawa
• 31: The team that wins the Cup unless it's Ottawa
• 32: Ottawa

After the first round it's pretty much the same but the lottery doesn't impact things and Ottawa's pick being pushed back to 32 doesn't either.

We of course want to optimize earlier picks, so we'd prioritize improving a first round pick over improving a second round pick. Because of that, we'll look at Edmonton's first round pick first.

• 18 if LA and either Utah or Anaheim reach the WCF
• 19 if one of LA, Utah, or Anaheim reaches the WCF and Edmonton does not
• 20 if Edmonton, LA, Utah, and Anaheim don't make the WCF
• 28 if Edmonton loses in the WCF and Ottawa does not reach the ECF
• 29 if Edmonton loses in the WCF and Ottawa reaches the ECF
• 31 if Edmonton wins the cup against any team OR loses the cup final against Ottawa

That means ideally we want LA and either Utah or Anaheim to reach the Western Conference Final since they're the only teams with fewer points than Edmonton and that pushes the pick earlier (Utah and Anaheim are in the Pacific and LA is in the Central for the playoffs, the WCF is between the teams that win their respective division in the playoffs).

Next we'll look at Colorado's second round pick. Them losing to LA means that they'll have the final pick of the regular season division winners that missed the conference final which will be pick 60.

Next is Vegas' fourth round pick. They're the division winner with the fewest points, so they'll have the first pick of that block. That means we want none of the division winners to reach the conference final which will bring this pick to 121st.

Finally, we have Montreal's fifth round pick. We don't want them reaching the conference final of course, but we'd also like as many teams below them as possible to reach the conference final. We have the West covered with LA and Anaheim or Utah reaching the Conference Final, in the Metro we have it covered by the division winner (Carolina) not reaching the conference final (the rest of the Metro teams have fewer points than Montreal), in the Atlantic we'd want Boston to reach the Conference Final. This would bring the pick to 150th.

With this optimal situation, aside from their own picks the Sharks would be picking 18 (1), 60 (2), 104 (4), 121 (4), 150 (5), and 174 (6)

Of course as you get later in the draft the benefit of picking a few spots earlier narrows. The gap between 150 (Montreal's optimal situation) and 160 (Montreal winning the cup) is very minor. PuckPedia's draft pick value calculator says that trading 160 and the final pick in the draft (224) would be more value than pick 150 by itself. Likewise with Vegas...few, if any, of us want them to do well, but if we wanted to cheer for a division winner in the East, moving from 121 to 123 is fairly negligible.