Originally Posted by Jay Random
That would still be more interesting than watching Bill Daly, The Man Who Looks Like A Thumb, open a bunch of oversized envelopes one after another and read team names off of cue cards. I was sufficiently interested last summer to watch the lottery announcement on TSN. For making it in that time-wasting and idiotic way, the entire NHL should be penalized two minutes for delay of life.
If they wanted to broadcast the actual drawing of the numbers, here's a way they could make it at least slightly interesting:
First, assign the numbers in such a way that each team's winning combinations do not contain its initial draft order based on standings. I mean that the last-place team would not have any winning combinations containing 1, the second-last team would not have any combinations containing 2, and so on.
Second, when the first and second balls are drawn, announce which teams have been eliminated from the running. This will give die-hard fans of those teams something to cuss and moan about, and the remaining viewers will get a sense of hope and tension that is not quite 100% bogus.
Third, after two balls have been drawn, cut away to a graphic showing the current odds for each team. The easy way to do this would be to prepare a different graphic for each of the 14 x 13 possibilities. The graphics could be designed with generic text strings like $TEAM1 or $TEAM13, and the computer would substitute the correct team names based on that year' order of finish.
Fourth, after three balls have been drawn, put up a graphic showing each of the 11 numbers remaining, and which team will win in case each of those numbers is drawn. By this point, more than 3 teams will have been eliminated (because some teams only have one or two combinations out of the whole 1,001), and this graphic will make it clear who can still possibly win. For bonus points, someone should write an algorithm that distributes the numbers in such a way that there are always at least two possible winners at this stage. It would look silly and anticlimactic if all 11 numbers produced the same result.
The whole thing would take no more time than the current broadcast, but it would be more visually interesting, and remove any suspicion that the lottery is somehow rigged. (Die-hard conspiracy theorists excepted; but you will never please them.) It would take a few hours' preparation time for a programmer and a graphic designer, in exchange for a broadcast that some people would actually find more interesting than watching paint dry.
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