Quote:
Originally Posted by Parallex
Highly doubt it...
1: At this point the Flames have just one game in hand on the teams near them in the standing with only Colorado having two.
2: If young enthusiasm counted for anything the Oilers would be winning the Cup not looking forward to hitting the links.
3: If pride factors in at all if Kipper hasn't had much pride for the rest of the season he isn't going to develop any extra now.
All that being said it isn't completely out of the realm of possibility that the Flames do draft as low as 5th... Carolina is just two points up on the Flames right now and a 3 point swing (Carolina currently owns the tie-breaker) in 9 games isn't impossible, unlikely but not impossible (SportsClubStats lists the percentile chance that the Flames finish 27th as 17%... 67% to finish 28-30). The Tampa Bay swing would be 5 points which is really unrealistic with so few games remaining.
If the Flames were to finish 4th from the bottom then there would exist a roughly 31% chance that a team below them wins the draft lottory and knocks us down a slot. so take that 17% provided by SportsClubStats and multiple it by 0.31 (Draft Lottory odds of those behind a theorhetical 27th place Flames team) and you get a 5.27-7.30% chance that the Flames draft 5th (the 7.3% is roughtly the odds that the Flames finish 26th less their odds of winning the lottory). The odds on 6th are obviously even less then that.
http://www.sportsclubstats.com/NHLlottery.html |
There's still plenty of time for the standings to change so I'm not counting on a bottom 4 finish until the season ends.