[TheScorpion]

That was a very, very short period of time, though. For the vast majority of the lottery's existence, it has only determined the top pick or, more recently, the top two picks.

I don't think it takes much deliberation to tie the Flames' unwillingness to be truly bad with the way they handled coming out of the late 1990s. The people who finance the team obviously don't want the team to fall into the same dire financial straits that it faced back in that timeframe. And there's no question that what San Jose is doing right now is particularly extreme (and their attendance has suffered greatly).

But franchise valuations are soaring across the board — the Coyotes just sold for $1.2 billion — and the Flames have already succeeded in leveraging the age of the Saddledome into a publicly-funded replacement.

I dunno. It feels like the Flames sometimes try harder to not lose too much than to actually win anything of consequence.