No more Stamkos

...And with the SECOND pick in the 2008 NHL draft, the Los Angeles Kings select...


Wait...they got the second pick? How did that happen?


So it seems the LA Kings can't even tank a season properly. In the last week of the NHL regular season, the Kings scored a huge upset win over the San Jose Sharks (Jeremy's Pre-Season pick to win the Stanley Cup), putting them in a tie with the Tampa Bay Lightning for 30th overall in the NHL. Since LA achieved their number of points with more wins than Tampa (A regulation tie is worth 1 point if you lose in OT), that meant that the Kings win the tiebreaker for 29th place. The last regular season game comes around, and the Kings start perennial all-stars Dan "Beachball" Cloutier, John "AARP" Klemm, and Brian "Skills" Willsie in an all-out attempt to lose, which they achieve, dropping a 4-3 decision. All Tampa needed was one lousy point to secure 29th place...which they can't do, giving up 2 goals in the last 56 seconds of their game against the Thrashers and losing 4-1. Jerks.


So isn't there a lottery or something?


Indeed...and the lottery was held last night. The way it works is that the teams draft in reverse order of finish, but in order to prevent a team from tanking a season (See the aforementioned Cloutier and Willsie starting lineup) in order to pick first, the #1 pick is somewhat up for grabs. Here's how it works:

One team wins a weighted lottery (The last place team gets a higher percentage of the winning numbers), and upon winning has the ability to move up to 4 spots in the draft. In that case, any of the bottom 5 teams can move up to #1, and the rest of the league picks in seed order. So, for the Kings, with their 29th place finish, their only chance of picking first was to win the lottery...whereas had they finished 30th, they could have either won the lottery, or had any of the 17-24th place teams win and secured the #1 pick.

In this case, the Tampa Bay Lightning had the #30 seed, and the highest percentage of winning lottery numbers. They ended up winning the lottery and secured their number 1 pick in the upcoming draft.


So the Kings could have ended up picking 3rd?


Indeed. An entire season of suckage, and all it would net is a #3 draft pick...that would have been tragic. As it is, they pick second...leaving almost no chance of Stamkos. :(