With the NHL’s 2026-27 season almost upon us, it’s time to make some award picks.Easy, right? Connor McDavid for the Hart, Cale Makar for the Norris, Porter Martone for the Calder, and all the various other favorites. Maybe a Macklin Celebrini here or a Nikita Kucherov there if you want to be different.So sure, easy. Too easy. For today at least, we’re skipping the favorites and aiming a little higher. It’s time for our annual attempt to nail some true long shots.We’ve been trying this for years. Do we get any right? Eh, not necessarily. But we’ve had some impressive near-misses, including last year when Gentille was sniffing around the Celebrini offensive outburst before just about anyone. But when we’re wrong, we’re really wrong. That’s part of the point — to look back a year or more later and realize how random a lot of this can feel.Which next gen superstars jumped the highest in the NHL player tiers?We’ll be using the odds posted by Bet365 as of early this week. (Note that odds can change over time.) To be clear, the idea here isn’t to encourage you to be on anything — we already have every intermission report on every TV broadcast to handle that. But the oddsmakers are a good measure of where expectations have been set, in a mostly objective way.For our purposes, we’re looking for odds of at least +2000, which is to say long shots of 20-to-1 or more, with the “we” being Sean Gentille, Sean McIndoe and Dom Luszczyszyn. If we hit one, you’ll never hear the end of it. If we whiff on everything, at least we’ll know we took the bat off our shoulder.Let’s find some plausible long shots.Norris Trophy (best defenseman)Luszczyszyn: Adam Fox (+3300)The tide has turned substantially on Fox in hockey circles over the last two years, but I’m still of the belief he’s one of the league’s most impactful defensemen. Last year on a per-game basis, he was still top-five in Net Rating and did that while finally proving he can handle matchup minutes. He’s being priced as if he isn’t a top-10 defenseman in the league and I simply can’t abide by that.Gentille: Jake Sanderson (+3300)It felt like the expectations surrounding Sanderson got a bit out of whack, but he came close to meeting them regardless. He had a top-10 Net Rating season at the position despite missing a chunk of games, and of that elite group, he might offer the most balance between offense and defense. If he has a similar season — tons of production, tons of two-way value — he’ll have a puncher’s chance for a finalist spot at minimum.McIndoe: Thomas Harley (+20000)Yes, that’s a 200-to-1 long shot. And yes, it’s my second year in a row picking Harley, who was at 300-to-1 last year despite finishing seventh in 2025. He didn’t get any votes in 2026, but he was rumored to be the key piece going to Columbus in the vetoed Zach Werenski deal. If you’re good enough to be traded for a Norris winner, surely you’re good enough to at least be in the running yourself, right?Calder Trophy (best rookie)Luszczyszyn: James Hagens (+2800)If Hagens can get any time with David Pastrňák or even a spot on the top power play, look out. Hagens only played five combined regular-season and playoff games for the Bruins last year, but in those games he was on the right side of the puck more often than most of the team. That’s a good sign for his NHL readiness, and his college scoring jump last season suggests there’s decent upside here.Gentille: Jacob Fowler (+2800)I’m not in love with any of the long-shot options here, and Dom already took Hagens off the board, so sure, give me Fowler, whatever. He’s one of the most highly regarded goaltending prospects in the league, and he’s only a Jakub Dobeš injury away from getting a whole bunch of starts for a playoff-caliber team with a gigantic voting base.