No. The analogy is extremely limited and not applicable to what I've been saying. Not playing the lottery is not the only way to become a millionaire. A lottery also has set mathematical odds that are far, far worse than any hockey deal. Playing the lottery carries a known risk and reward that is quantifiable and objective. Hockey trades or often mostly subjective.
I still don't understand what you're driving at.
The ease with which any trade proposal can be dismissed without much thought is not the same as stating the fact that choice is involved in the job of every GM... even one up against the cap, as many are.
The degree to which any GM is perceived to overpay or underpay is fairly subjective, and part of most deals. The problem with hypothetical trade offers as the litmus test to prove there were no deals out there is that any trade offer can be shot down by choosing to either just say "overpayment and insane/irrational" or "not offering enough and player is not being traded". It's easy and requires very little thought. It also doesn't disprove the idea that possible deals existed and weren't made, however subjectively good or bad.
People saying "how do you know what was offered and what wasn't" as a defense of the front office don't know that information, either. There are massive assumptions being made about what was done and what could have been done. The degree to which those things are perceived as "irrational", "sane", or "unrealistic" is also part of this assumption process. Some are from the premise that we went right up to the line of irrationality and stopped there, when we simply don't know that, and the definition is not universal.
People misuse this phrase all the time, but it's an actual logical fallacy that means something specific:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/begging-the-question.html
Just because nothing was done doesn't mean that nothing could have been done. It's logically and factually inaccurate, but that's what's being said and assumed. There is no double standard here. The arguments I am countering are known logical fallacies. That is my point.