What else is he going to say? "Yeah, we're not really trying to win the Cup next year. But you should totally buy overpriced tickets!!"
There is lot of options to say if intention is something else than contend. Like make the playoffs, get our team younger, refresh our team etc. I feel it would be stupid to say "Our goal is to win the cup next year" if it would be obvious the team wouldn't have good enough roster to contend.