Let me preface this by saying this is unlikely...but there is a scenario where the Senators actually have a first round pick that goes into the lottery this season. They have given up their pick to the Colorado Avalanche already, so no, this scenario doesn't include them re-acquiring the pick. Instead, it involves the San Jose Sharks.
In the Erik Karlsson trade, the conditions on the first round pick are that it becomes a 2020 first rounder if San Jose makes the playoffs this season, but it becomes a 2019 first rounder if they miss this season. And if they miss the playoffs, that means Ottawa will have a slim chance at getting a top-3 pick via the lottery. It would be unlikely that they would land that high, but we've also recently seen the 12th last Philadelpha Flyers end up with the 2nd overall pick. Furthermore, the lowest the pick would be is 15th, so that's still a significant selection.
Where do the Sharks currently stand though?
Through 28 games, they have a record of 13-10-5, which is good for 3rd in the dreadful Pacific Division and 7th in the Western Conference. They're still in a playoff spot so the sky isn't falling, but they haven't been nearly as good as people had hoped. They actually have a negative goal differential at -4, which puts them at 17th in the league.
Their shot metrics are still excellent with a CF% of 55.22% that ranks third, their scoring-chance percentage also ranks third, and their high-danger scoring chance percentage ranks sixth. It's not as if they aren't controlling the games, but they have been getting some awful luck. Clearly they still have a ton of talent with Erik Karlsson, Brent Burns, Joe Pavelski, Logan Couture, Joe Thornton, and Evander Kane on the roster, but it hasn't totally clicked just yet.
Their overall SH% ranks 27th at 8.6%, and their SV% ranks 25th at 89.31%. When you combine those two dreadful/unlucky results, you get a team that is 26th in PDO. For comparison, last year they finished 20th in SH% and 15th in SV%, and even that is still below average but it was good enough to get them 100 points on the season and 11th in the entire league. I wouldn't expect a massive spike in luck at both ends of the ice, but you'd have to think that at some point more of the results would go their way.
It's not like they are giving up a ton of shots like the Senators where it's easy to see why the team SV% is so low. Rather, I'd be pretty shocked if Martin Jones didn't improve his horrendous 89.4 SV%. I still like their roster, although they might not look as good as they did coming into the season. And that's a sobering thought for Sharks fans who know that their roster is getting older.
So what does this all mean? The Sharks are almost certainly going to be a playoff team, and I still think they have a chance to go deep in the playoffs. I don't think they are as good as Winnipeg or Nashville, but in a seven game series, they could easily beat any of the other teams in the conference. I'd expect their performance to improve from where it has been, but at the same time, there's probably like a ~10% chance that they miss the playoffs. Hell, Micah Blake McCurdy has them at a 24% chance to miss:
Playoff chances, West and East. pic.twitter.com/yHg6OD4laW
— Micah Blake McCurdy (@IneffectiveMath) December 3, 2018
That small chance at least makes things interesting with this first round pick. Vegas could easily surpass San Jose, St. Louis is doing awful but should be a lot better, Edmonton is hanging around, and even Arizona is a darkhorse candidate to make it in. It isn't hard to envision a scenario where one or two of those teams gets hot and Jones and Aaron Dell continue their run of not being able to make a save.
As I've said, it's unlikely that San Jose misses the playoffs entirely, but getting any pick in the top-15 would certainly take the sting out of Ottawa losing their own first round pick in the upcoming draft. Sometimes good teams miss the playoffs, and we can't entirely rule out this scenario.