As you may know, the Florida Panthers won the draft lottery last night and will pick first overall. The Lottery is for some reason televised, even though only one team can move up. In fact, it's the dumbest and most ridiculous lottery in sports and I don't even know why they even have it.

To protect against tanking? That's dumb. If you want to lose on purpose and alienate your fanbase, that should be your call to make. Regardless, if you are going to have a lottery, and you are going to televise it, couldn't you at least make it interesting? This was worse than ladies curling. (Not that men's curling is better to watch or anything!)

So for all the Drama, the Sabres move down and the Panthers move up a spot each. Wow. That was thrilling. Way to really spice things up, NHL.

It would have been fun if teams could have had a chance to move around a bit, but only one team did. The Coyotes, had a 0.8% chance to win the lottery. Oddly, (haha) that did not come to fruition. The Coyotes will pick 13th.

To miss the playoffs and pick 13th is the worst. You gotta either be one of the worst teams or make the playoffs. Sure you can get lucky with a mid-round pick, but it is probably the least desirable position a team can be in. Despite that, I will do an article later on checking out some of the guys the Coyotes might get, should they hold onto the pick.



---

Well, probably no one cares, and certainly the Coyotes are not involved in any way, but why not use this forum to publicly predict the winners of the first round? After going back and forth on whether or not there was any point to doing so, I basically decided: might as well!


West

Colorado vs. Minnesota

Even though Matt Duchene is injured and will miss two games, I still think Colorado with Stastny, MacKinnen, Landeskog and O'reilly are too good to go out in the first round.

St.Louis vs. Chicago

So what if the Blues lost a bunch of meaningless games down the stretch? I am sure they would rather not have had to play the Hawks, but its also not like there are any easy series' anyway. The Hawks best players are all coming back from injury and the Blues will win.


Anaheim vs. Dallas

Everyone I know is picking the Stars for the trendy upset. Won't happen. Dallas is too weak on defense and the Ducks have Corey Perry.

San Jose vs. LA

This should be a great series, or at least until you realize that LA somehow manages to be the most boring team in the NHL to watch. Kopitar, Richards, Carter, Gaborik and Doughty and they still find a way to chock the fun out of any hockey game? Darryl Suter is the worst! But also, I guess one of the best, depending on your outlook. Still, since I hate to watch the Kings I pick San Jose.

Plus, you might not know this if you don't watch the Western Conference much, but San Jose is crazy good. They never win it all though, and people always blame Thornton, but sometimes winning is as much about luck as anything, so I don't think it should cloud his career. Anyways, Thornton is a first ballot Hall of Famer and I think this is the year he wins his Cup.


East

Boston vs. Detroit

Boston deserves to lose just for trading away Tyler Seguin. Detroit will give them a good run, and I think, pull off the upset. Its becoming quite clear I am picking teams to win based on my own personal love and/or hate for them. This is what happens when there is no betting or consequence to being wrong! (Plus I don't want to be one of those guys who picks seven favorites and one upset, just to try to look as smart as Nick Kypreos).

Montreal vs. Tampa

As you may know, I live in Canada. In Canada right now, there are about seven million articles and media pieces about the Canadiens being "Canada's team" i.e because they are the only one of the seven Canadian teams to make the playoffs. I am not going to cheer for Montreal because they are also from Canada. That seems so stupid to me. What do I care where a team is located? I've never been to Montreal, I don't know anyone from Montreal, it is as remote to me as (ironically, I would suppose) Phoenix. How do these people (the un-critical thinking nationalistic ones) figure out who to cheer for in the CFL?

Anyways, rant over, I pick the Canadiens anyways. Carey Price, by the way, is why.

Philadelphia vs. New York

The Flyers will win because Paul Holgrem is a genius and he has some of the best forwards in the NHL, due to his great trading abilities. Glen Sather is dining out on a 40 year old reputation and is a terrible manager, who traded his Captain and best player for a whiner of similar vintage. NYR is going down in four.

And, lets be realistic for a second:

This is not a joke - if Glen Sather was fired and they hired me they would be a better team. Instantly.

Pittsburgh vs. Columbus

Sidney Crosby is easily the best player in the world, and Malkin is close to second. They should win, but I like the goal-tending and tenacity of Columbus. I wouldn't bet on it, but since there is no downside to doing so, lets call the upset. Hurray Columbus!


That was surprisingly fun. Thanks for reading.

Tweets:@james_tanner123

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