Draft Lottery is it rigged?

[Brodeur]

I still enjoy my Colorado buddy (who has a couple PhDs in bioengineering) freaking out and crying conspiracy after the Avs got bumped down to #4 in 2017 and 2019. I had to remind him:

1. Did you already forget about the Avs winning the 2013 lottery for MacKinnon?

2. Just because you have the 'best' odds at 18%, that means you have an 82% chance of not picking #1. In 2017, the Avs had a 52% chance at dropping to #4. In 2019, it was 50.6%. If I flip a coin twice and it came up heads both times it doesn't mean that the coin is rigged.

3. Even by 2019, it was looking like the Avs lucked into Cale Makar as they would have taken Nolan Patrick had he been available.

 

[sharski]

Plot twist: the league actually manipulats the lottery, but not because they care about generational talent in the bigger markets, they just love torturing the fan bases of teams who never win anything anyways

It's our suffering they want to see, not others' happiness

 

[jMoneyBrah]

Plot twist: the league actually manipulats the lottery, but not because they care about generational talent in the bigger markets, they just love torturing the fan bases of teams who never win anything anyways

It's our suffering they want to see, not others' happiness

Honestly, we knew it was this all along. All this conspiratorial speculation is just so we can sleep better at night, allowing ourselves to imagine a world where Hasso just has to pay off the right person and then we too can experience the unknowable high of possessing our very own super star franchise altering talent, chockless playoff runs, championship banners, and, dare to dream, a dynasty.

Alas, we know. When we search the depths of our hearts; we know what we’ve known all along: they will never let us. They glad hand our hapless GM during annual board meetings, artfully adjusting lottery rules and expansion drafts, always dangling maybe this time so tantalizingly close. All the while in the room just beyond: they plot, they deceive, they, like Scrooge McDuck in his money, backstroke leisurely through our sorrow.

But hope arises. Perhaps this is the time. We have shed the Lombardis, and the Wilsons; the Gregors and Karlssonseses. And in the “building a new culture” we’ve assembled the necessary instruments of requisite futility: the limitless conveyor belt of reclamation, of “middle 6”, of bottom pair, of undersized “scoring” winger. We have mastered the waiver wire. Even our steadfast warriors, the last connections to Ill fated hope of glory, have faltered with the timeliness of opportune. And then we see, we see the prize just yonder; and one so tailored to us, our people, our dream.

And just — upon forging the courage to lift our eyes; to stand stern with shoulders back and hand raised to shade our sight from the iridescence of glory and victory — as hope crescendos… the fever dream breaks. And we know what we’ve always known. They will never let us.

 

[coooldude]

... because every single one of them is stupid and a symptom of desperate fans who need to see meaning in the chaos to find comfort because the idea that a cold impartial universe doesn't give one iota of a crap about anything other than the cold hard hand of probability scares the bejeebus out of them.

From our darkness, we call out to Thee, Gary. Have mercy on us because we are small and frightened and we deserve Celebrini.