So as we head to March, here is my (rather detailed) breakdown of the standings and the potential probabilities of where we could end up picking (warning for TL;DR is that you may head to my summary section at the end of this crap if you want since I don't get paid by the word):
OUT OF RANGE (LOW END EDITION)
1. Detroit Red Wings (35 points lol)
COULD GO EITHER WAY (LOW END EDITION WITHIN 6-10 POINTS)
2. Los Angeles Kings (54 points, 65 games played)
IN THE HUNT (WITHIN 4 POINTS EITHER WAY)
3. Ottawa Senators (58 points, 66 games played)
4. San Jose Sharks (60 points, 65 games played)
5. Anaheim Ducks (60 points, 64 games played)
6. New Jersey Devils (62 points, 64 games played)
COULD GO EITHER WAY (HIGH END EDITION WITHIN 6-10 POINTS)
7/8. Chicago Blackhawks/Buffalo Sabres (66 points, 65 games played, Buffalo Sabres hold RW tiebreaker)
9. Montreal Canadiens (69 points, 65 games played)
OUT OF RANGE (HIGH END EDITION, SOME TEAMS HAVE 3 GAMES IN HAND, BUT I THINK IT'S A MATHEMATICAL IMPROBABILITY TO CATCH TEAMS 10+ POINTS AHEAD)
10. Minnesota Wild (71 points, same amount of games played)
11/12. Arizona Coyotes/Winnipeg Jets (72 points); Nashville is in the 2nd wild card with 72 points and 3 games in hand.
13-15. Florida (73 points), New York Rangers (74 points), Carolina Hurricanes (75 points)
To summarize, the back-end of the draft will change but that doesn't matter since IMO, most of these teams are uncatchable. My thoughts are that the Ducks will be settling in the pre-draft lottery odds somewhere between 3-6 with an outside shot of getting as low as 2 (depending on H2H with the Kings) or as high as 8 or 9 (if they go on an insane run to close the year and the Blackhawks and Canadiens completely fade).
The way I've projected it, that puts the Ducks with odds between 7.5% and 11.5% to get the #1 pick and odds between 23.3% and 33.9% to land a top 3 pick. That seems pretty good, I'll take my chances riding with that.