The Chicago Blackhawks will take Connor Bedard with the No. 1 pick at the 2023 NHL Draft in Nashville on June 28. That is a stone-cold fact you can take to the bank. But we've got a few weeks until that day and idle hands are the dreamer's playground in this case because it gets us thinking about what it would take to maybe wrestle the top pick away.

Full transparency here: None of these things will happen, but we're not interested in reality at this very moment, we're interested in starting a bar-room argument. That's why we've come up with six ideas that will ideally accomplish that feat.

Will any of these trades happen? Not a chance, but that doesn't matter one bit. The "what if?" side of this is the most important thing, but the important thing is to make you stop and say, "Huh... OK... I'm listening."

An idea as bold as this requires the kind of inspiration you get from other leagues. The NHL version of a Herschel Walker trade in 1989 or Mike Ditka trading his entire draft class to take Ricky Williams in 1999 would take just about as many moving parts and as much chutzpah one could muster to pull it off. It would also need two GMs willing to put their careers on the line to do it.

So... what will it take to land No. 1? Let's get to scheming.

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Edmonton Oilers

Who's the best NHL player in the world right now? It's Connor McDavid and, like Connor Bedard, he's been in this position before as the young phenom that will change a franchise forever.

When the Oilers won the lottery in 2015 to take McDavid, the common thought was Edmonton's return to glory was imminent and the Stanley Cups they won throughout the 80s and into 1990 would be back in greater numbers with No. 97 in charge.

Now that we're eight years past McDavid's draft and the Oilers haven't been much closer a Stanley Cup since they've added him (under no fault of his own, mind you), a change of scenery would be the best thing to happen.

The Oilers could continue their never-ending pursuit of a Cup with yet another player out of the Wayne Gretzky mold of generational talent and Chicago would get the absolute best player in the game right now while he's in the prime of his career. It's the known quantity versus what's in the mystery box.

The mystery box could be anything, it could even be the next McDavid, but having McDavid means knowing exactly what you're getting and what Chicago would be getting is the best scorer in the league by leaps and bounds. Bedard could become that, but when the bar is set at playing as well or better than McDavid, just having McDavid would be great.

Edmonton could loosen their salary-cap situation and get a player that may well be the next McDavid. They'd also be able to do with Bedard what they haven't done with McDavid: give him a deeper supporting cast to win a Cup or two.

St. Louis Blues

If a team is going to acquire the draft pick to take a player like Connor Bedard, they have to bring the absolute thunder. It means coughing up young players and first round picks and future first round picks, too. Any kind of weak idea gets thrown out and mocked by everyone.

Looking at this year's draft, one team, the St. Louis Blues, has multiple first-round picks and has incredible young talent to include in an offer that would turn heads. Consider this one like the Herschel Walker trade for the NHL.

The Blues have three picks in the first round this year (10th, 25th and 29th overall). Three picks like that are not enough to move the needle for a rival team like Chicago to even consider it. That's why adding 25-year-old Jordan Kyrou and 23-year-old Robert Thomas to the deal is necessary.

The Blues have shown in the past they were unwilling to move Kyrou and Thomas when they were up-and-coming prospects in the Ryan O'Reilly trade with Buffalo and lost Tage Thompson in the process. The Blues won a Stanley Cup with O'Reilly, Kyrou and Thomas and now Thompson has turned into an elite scorer with the Sabres. A win-win deal if there ever was one. But it would take a lot to get the Blues to part with Kyrou and Thomas and Bedard is the one reason to do it.

The Blues shouldn't move a lot of futures, but if they got the future in Bedard, it's a sacrifice just about anyone would be willing to make.

Arizona Coyotes

If there was one team that really needed to win the NHL Draft Lottery to get the chance to take Connor Bedard, it was the Arizona Coyotes. They may or may not be able to call the desert home for much longer and landing the right to draft Bedard might've been the thing to ensure that. So why not go all out to bring him to Arizona?

The Coyotes' questionable future has made it uncomfortable for star forward Clayton Keller, who wanted the team's arena deal to win the vote. But if the unknown future is a problem, the Chicago Blackhawks aren't moving anywhere. The Coyotes also have the 6th and 12th picks in the 2023 draft as well and their top prospect Logan Cooley (No. 3 pick in 2022) was one of the best players in college hockey at Minnesota this season.

Keller, Cooley and two picks in the first 12 and 2024's first-round pick for No. 1 and the shot to take Bedard is a huge sacrifice for the Coyotes who need all the young talent they can get their hands on to become a playoff team and eventually contend for a Cup. But a package that large for a player who would potentially alter the entire timeline of a franchise, location and all, is one worth making.

Chicago would land one outstanding scorer in Keller, a potential elite scorer in Cooley and three first-round picks to continue to build their kitty of draft picks and potential elite talent. It's a quantity versus quality argument and quantity means a lot when the quality is great.

Vancouver Canucks

Connor Bedard's hometown team is the Vancouver Canucks and there's nothing people love more than having a home-grown talent return to their roots. The Canucks were hoping that bit of karma could've worked in their favor during the lottery, but their dreams were dashed when their name came up for the 11th pick in the 2023 draft.

That's why Vancouver would stop at nothing to try and bring Bedard home. The Canucks are a bit messy right now and they're caught between needing to rebuild or needing to build on the fly. They don't have a ton of draft picks, but they do have two elite young talents in defenseman Quinn Hughes and forward Elias Pettersson and to bring Bedard home to Vancouver you have to move both of them out to try and make it happen.

Salary costs are no object for Chicago because they have no long-term contracts to handle apart from Seth Jones and Connor Murphy. Pettersson is due a big deal after the upcoming season and Hughes is signed through 2026-27. Those two players and Vancouver's 2023 first-round pick at No. 11 offers enough juice for consideration, but the Canucks coughing up their next two first-round picks in 2024 and 2025 is enough to ponder the thought, and really, that's what we're looking for here.

The Canucks and Blackhawks working together seems almost unimaginable after their playoff battles in the 2010s and this kind of offer would at least make everyone equally mad off the ice.

Montréal Canadiens

The Montréal Canadiens had a lot of lottery fortune last year when they won the No. 1 pick and took Juraj Slafkovsky. Missing out on the chance to draft Connor Bedard and ensuring the ability to roar up the standings in the Eastern Conference hurts. What the Canadiens are building looks solid, particularly with young guys like Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Kirby Dach and Kaiden Guhle along with Slafkovsky and Filip Mesar in the pipeline.

That's a lot of strong young talent which is just what it would take to lure Chicago into thinking about trading the No. 1 pick. Montréal also has two first-round picks this year with the fifth pick and either pick 31 or 32, depending on whether or not the Florida Panthers win the Stanley Cup. Giving Chicago that list of prospects and saying they can pick any three of them and including both firsts this year makes for a fun "would you or wouldn't you" argument.

If someone is going to make a run at the first pick, any player has to be on the table and available, no matter how much you might love them, their potential or both.

Caufield being from Wisconsin would make him an automatic hometown-region guy in Chicago and given how he can fill up the net, an instant favorite too. Suzuki is the Habs captain and a strong scorer and leader while Dach used to be with Chicago and became an excellent player with Montréal this season.

The Canadiens would get the best player they've had since Patrick Roy and best forward since...the 1970s? Chicago would get a loaded crew of young forwards and still have a top-5 pick in this draft.

Nashville Predators

How many draft picks in one draft would it take to land the first one overall? The Nashville Predators should give it a shot this year to find out.

The Predators have 13 picks in the 2023 draft and Nashville's new GM Barry Trotz made it a point at the press conference introducing new coach Andrew Brunette that he wants the Predators to score goals and keep up with the rest of the NHL. What better way to do that than trading all 13 picks for Chicago's No. 1 pick to take Connor Bedard?

Nashville has two picks in the first (15 and 24), second (46 and 47) and fifth rounds (143, 147) and three picks in the third (68, 79, 83) and fourth rounds (111, 115, 121) as well as a sixth-round pick (175). That's seven top-100 picks of the 13 they have. That's the kind of quantity (and quality) a team has for both building up a system and for making trades.

If someone is going to go full Mike Ditka-in-New Orleans and give away an entire draft full of picks for one player Trotz probably isn't the guy that's going to do it. But not everyone has 13 picks in their pocket for this draft (Arizona and San Jose each have 12 for what it's worth). The Predators are lacking in elite prospects to sweeten any kind of offer but that's why you give up an entire draft.

Making that kind of move would give Chicago 24 picks in the 2023 draft which would also be incredible in itself and more than enough to wheel and deal to their hearts content throughout the two days of the draft.