Before the puck was dropped this season is the key phrase. Was Ottawa finishing last predictable, sure, but the league has a ton of parity and we could have easily not come last. And, even when we did come last, we still had >50% odds for our pick to land 4th. Lets say if you run a simulation of this season 1000 times, and lets say Ottawa comes last 850 of the times, we would pick 4th or lower ~60% of the time. Maybe "overwhelmingly likely" is an exaggeration, but the main point is that at there was literally never a fraction of a second where we were more likely to pick 1-3 than we were to pick 4-31.