Some other interesting ones on there also
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How many remember how we got Vinny?
we did lose the lottery, but some wise GM not = to SFY was wise in his own way to secure Vinny:
The NHL introduced the draft lottery in 1995. Not counting last year, that leaves us with an even 10 instances when a team has "lost" the lottery, which we'll define as the last-place team overall getting passed over for the top pick. (So we're not counting 1995, 1999 or 2011, when the winning team didn't move up to first.) With the benefit of some hindsight, we can look back at the teams involved, the eventual top pick and the player who fell to No. 2, and try to figure out which loss hurt the most.
We'll work our way down from best to worst. And we'll start in 1998, the first time the lottery ever resulted in the top pick changing hands, sort of.
No. 10: 1998
Last-place team: Tampa Bay Lightning
Lottery-winning team: San Jose Sharks, by virtue of owning the Florida Panthers' pick
First overall pick: Vincent Lecavalier
How much did it hurt?: This is the easiest call on the list, because it didn't hurt at all. Literally. It had no impact on anything, as you might already suspect if you're thinking, "Uh, I don't remember Lecavalier being drafted by the Sharks."
That's because the last-place Lightning went into the lottery with an insurance policy in their back pocket. At that year's deadline, they had traded Bryan Marchment and David Shaw to San Jose for Andrei Nazarov and convinced the Sharks to toss in a sweetener: the right to swap their first-round pick for the Panthers', which San Jose had acquired earlier in the season. With the Lightning well back of the Panthers in the standings, the swap option wouldn't matter. Unless Florida won the lottery.
They did, and the Lightning moved back up to first. The Sharks got the second pick, flipped it to Nashville (who took David Legwand) and ended up getting Brad Stuart third overall. And Lecavalier headed to Tampa Bay to become "the Michael Jordan of hockey."
just a blast from the past. Still hoping to sniff 100 points and make our pick last or near last as a result.
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