Vancouver fans sat down to watch the draft lottery with a rare sense of optimism. "Maybe something nice will happen," we said to one another, dreaming of a future with Auston Matthews in Canucks blue. But a few moments later, we were back to our normal, Louis CK-esque cynicism (NSFW), as the franchise fell to fifth on draft day, losing out on not just Matthews, but also the two highly-touted Finnish forwards projected to go immediately after him.
Although not everybody went straight to cynicism and anger. PITB's own Daniel Wagner landed smack-dab in a pool of empty, existential angst. "I can’t claim this didn’t affect me," he said. "This post would have gone up much sooner, with far more pithy quips about the efficacy of Pat Quinn playing cards if it didn’t. But it’s an empty hollow feeling rather than a bitter anger, despairing sadness, or sick resignation." Poor Daniel.
But there's still hope! The secret to beating failure is to move the goalposts. Forget first place. Embrace fifth. If you lie to yourself, it's often much better. That in mind, here are six reasons that picking fifth isn't so bad:
You can still draft a generational player at number five.
I've heard a lot of people say the Canucks can still draft a "good' player, as though the best to hope for in the five-hole is the next Chris Higgins. But that's little more than defeatism. Vancouver can still draft a great player -- even a generational player. You can find one of those anywhere. Sure, it's more likely with the first overall pick than the fifth, but it's also more likely at five than at six, seven, 29, or 179. It's all relative. As a Canucks fan, you should probably embrace relativity. You'll be happier. (Maybe not happy, as it were. But happier for sure. Like I said: embrace relativity.)
Disappointment now means less of it later.
Nothing ever goes the Canucks way; this draft lottery is further evidence. So I ask you: what's worse: losing out on the chance to draft one of the big three, or doing so, only to watch him bust in Vancouver? You scoff, but considering Vancouver's luck -- the sort of luck that sees them falling to fifth, as the most recent example of this city's accursedness -- you know they might have found a way to blow it, even with the pick. Better to get the disappointment out of the way now.
Sometimes fifth is better than first.
This is true of the Star Wars franchise, where Empire crushes Phantom Menace in a head-to-head. It's also true of "The 12 Days of Christmas", where everyone is sick of singing "and a partridge in a pear tree" by song's end, but bellowing FIVE GOLDEN RINGS!!! never gets old. (It's also a better gift. A dozen feral birds or 40 golden rings? Dude. You could open a store with all that gold.)
Screw the Leafs
The Leafs are the worst and wholly undeserving of any love from the West Coast. But in recent years, they've actually been the worst, which has made it harder and harder to hate them with the fire of a thousand suns. (At one point, I was down to 10 or 11 suns, and that's not nearly enough suns.) Thank goodness that's over, though. All this empathy was beginning to eat me alive. Now, thanks to all this jealousy and rage, I'm happily back to harbouring a senseless, tribal antipathy for Toronto. All is right with the world.
No obnoxious arguments fuelled by hindsight
Suppose the Canucks won the right to draft second or third, had to choose between Patrik Laine and Jesse Puljujärvi, and chose wrong. Every single time the Canucks' lesser Finn was outshone by the superior one, we'd have heard about it. TSN 1040 would add an afternoon program dedicated solely to complaining about it. Twitter would be twice as insufferable as it is now. And even though it would have been a coin toss, supposed master scout Jim Benning would have been blamed for getting it wrong. Now there's no way for him to blow it. (Unless he drafts Jake Bean.)
There's always next year.
Finally, if you're still upset about what transpired last week, know that redemption could still be coming. Watching the Canucks this season, I'm pretty confident they'll have another crack at a high pick next year.
