You may be right, but that isn't what I was specifically pushing back on. I don't doubt that winning lotteries and picking higher is in itself a good, I am just pushing back on that burning it all down so we can be at bottom of league long enough to get multiple high picks is always best for franchises or is even the best for us moving forward.
I really think the odds we pick in the single digits next season is much higher than this board seems to think, regardless of what Armstrong wants and is saying and maybe even what he does this offseason. He doesn't have to burn down anything for us to hit the bottom given the construction of our defense and them aging another year.
This team was bottom three in xG% at 5 on 5 and was propped up by goaltending and health. Three years ago we overperformed our xG numbers and we thought the team could maybe contend until Binnington got ran. Then the next year, we the wheels fell off the wagon and we couldn't escape the music.
It's easy to talk yourself into thinking the team is trending up, especially with young forwards like Neighbours and Bolduc taking more minutes, but it's hard to imagine getting another top 3 season from our goalie tandem, the team being similarly healthy, and our aging defense getting better with another year behind them.
I'm not sure any move Armstrong realistically makes, given the rhetoric, would really affect that fate, like signing a short term deal with a veteran center. I guess the fear is he does something like the Pens going all-in with Karlsson... only to finish with 3 less points than the previous year... but with multiple major assets gone. I don't expect he's delusional enough to not be realistic about where we are as a team, despite us nearly making the playoffs or him continuing the hopeful stance in press conferences.
He's not going to go scorched earth, but that doesn't mean we won't pick top 5. In that way I think he's trying to kind of have his cake and eat it to (if the cake was made of dirt, I guess) by not selling off to discourage fans but still get the pick we need.
But we'll see. No one really knows what's going to happen, and while this season was disappointing, and likely the next few as well, at least this one showed we do have some real building blocks, if we can build up the foundation around them.