The 2016 NHL draft lottery is on Saturday and some Canucks fans are getting pumped up. After all, a top-three pick or—can you imagine?—the first overall pick would significantly change the course of the Canucks. This could be a franchise-defining moment.
You’ll have to forgive me, but I’m having a tough time getting excited, mainly because I feel like I already know what will happen.
Asking me to get excited about the draft lottery is asking me to believe that chance—a random selection of numbers—will favour the Canucks. I just can’t bring myself to do that. I’m approaching the draft lottery with a feeling of dread, not optimism.
It’s not just that the odds don’t favour the Canucks. They don’t, but that’s not why I’m feeling so fatalistic. But to start off, in brazen defiance of Han Solo, I’m going to tell you the odds.
Because of the new draft lottery format, every non-playoff team has a chance at one of the top three picks. As a result, the most likely result for the Canucks is that two teams who finished ahead of them in the standings leapfrog them at the draft, and they pick fifth overall.
There’s actually a higher chance that the Canucks pick fifth (37.8%) than that they pick in any of the top three spots (34.2%).
On an intellectual level, I understand that the Canucks are more likely to pick first overall than all but two teams. And yet, there is a cynical side of me that simply knows that they won’t. It’s not that the Canucks only have a 11.5% chance of picking first overall, so it’s incredibly likely that someone else will pick first, but that I know there’s no chance. Not 11.5%. 0%.
Yes, the rational, reasonable side of my brain tells me that it’s all pure numbers and the numbers have no feelings. They don’t care who the Canucks are. They don’t even know who the Canucks are. They’re just numbers. But sometimes it feels like numbers are out to get you.
Some might say that this feeling stems from a lack of understanding of numbers and statistics. But does anyone truly understand numbers and statistics? I mean really understand.
We don’t even know what numbers really are, if you think about it too much. I mean, I can look at three carrots and say, “Hey, there’s three carrots,” but that’s not the number three. Should we appeal to Platonic ideals, or claim that numbers are mental concepts untethered from the material world? But who can know how many three is without seeing three carrots, or three fingers, or three of anything else?
Do numbers exist without minds to think of them? If there are three carrots on the ground, but there’s no one around to count them, are there still three carrots? But when someone does count them, are they defining the number of carrots or simply discovering the number that was always there?
What if the mathematical underpinnings of the universe, the unknown (or perhaps unknowable) numbers that define the ongoing existence of all things, just really hate the Canucks?
It wasn’t just luck that landed the spinning wheel on 11, giving the Buffalo Sabres Gilbert Perreault, but eldritch mathematics momentarily tweaking the physics of friction.
As the puck came off Nathan Lafayette’s stick, the space between the goalposts of the Rangers net bent inwards, warping reality as 6 momentarily decided to be less than 5.
Dan Cloutier’s glove was in line to catch Nicklas Lidstrom’s slap shot from centre ice until non-Euclidean geometry momentarily intervened.
Even those moments when the numbers seemed to be our friends, they were really just playing the long con. Pavel Bure just happened to have played a few extra games in the past, making him eligible to be drafted? Brian Burke inexplicably ends up with both the second and third overall picks? The numbers were just toying with us, raising our hopes only to dash them on the rocks of game seven. Yes, seven, the number that is meant to represent perfection, purity and holiness. Instead, for Canucks fans, it represents pure, abject cruelty.
Am I alone in my dread? It seems that many Canucks fans are full of hope and optimism. An informal poll on the Canucks website shows that 32% of fans think the Canucks will win the lottery and select first overall. 18% think the Canucks will pick second and 20% third. Only 13% think the Canucks will pick fifth.
I’m sorry, but I just don’t have that much faith in a roll of the dice. Or tumble of a ping pong ball. Either way, no faith.
