Taken in full, the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs is one of working-class aspiration. Putting the Cup drought aside, no franchise in all of sports has managed more with less top-of-the-scale talent.
Only two Leafs (Ted Kennedy and Babe Pratt) have been chosen league MVP. The last time one of them led the NHL in goals scored was shortly after the end of the Second World War.
As such, Toronto isn't looking for its next best-in-the-game talent. It is looking for a first.
It's a two-fold advantage for the teenager the Leafs will take with the No. 1 pick in June's entry draft.
As a native of Arizona, Auston Matthews can't fully comprehend the weight of expectation that is about to be dropped on him from a great height. You need to be from here to catch that sickness.
If the Leafs are smart, they will encourage Matthews to learn nothing about the market he's coming to. They don't want him arriving with pre-emptive shellshock.
Second, the bar Matthews has to reach to qualify as 'very good' by local standards is so low, it'd be harder to limbo under than leap over.
He doesn't have to be a Gretzky, a Richard or a Hull to qualify as a success. If he can reach up to Doug Gilmour levels, they'll tape a gold halo around the crown of his helmet.
The space between the draft lottery and the draft itself requires a great deal of airtime to be fulfilled, so we'll spend the next few weeks wondering if Matthews deserves the top slot.
It hardly matters since the Leafs cannot afford to take anyone but the long-time consensus No. 1. Because in failing to do so, they would be giving up the main thing they've won in the short term: time.
The whole point of 2015-16 season was not getting a promising player. It was getting a promising player whose name people recognized.
If Toronto had been put in the position of trying to feed Alexander Nylander or Pierre-Luc Dubois to the mob, they'd have spit the kid back.
After losing the lottery, everyone would be back to whining about the curses. That's the opposite of what the Leafs organization wants to sell.
Their motto for the foreseeable future is 'Better lucky than good.' As soon as people begin to believe the team isn't lucky, they will begin to notice that it may never be good.
A draft-lottery disappointment would have put huge pressure on the organization to show something next year – some glimpse of promise in the form of William Nylander or Mitch Marner or a goalie who isn't so knock-kneed he can't get his legs together.
If that doesn't go to plan, ownership starts getting fidgety, which in turn makes management stupid. The rebuild timeline gets compressed. Before you know it, the panic has set in and you're back to Courtnall-for-Kordic territory.
Matthews frees them from all that. The knock-on effect of his mere acquisition cannot be exaggerated.
It doesn't matter how good he is now. It doesn't matter if he plays or if anyone sees him or if he can be said to be doing anything beyond 'progressing'.
In fact, the less people see of Matthews, the better.
The Leafs have made a developmental philosophy out of hiding players in the AHL or other foreign parts. What's never mentioned is how much that absence insulates them from criticism.
As long as Marner, Nylander et al are out of sight, they may still be the reincarnation of Charlie Conacher. Nobody's seen them play for an extended period against top pros, so who's to say any different?
Thus, the Leafs fanbase is rooting for an imaginary team. It won't start playing together until two, three or even four years from now. It's never lost a game. Theoretically, it may never lose one.
The only reason people aren't lining up outside the Air Canada Centre with torches is that they believe – deeply – that some version of that is coming. The longer they wait, the more bolded names added to the as-yet-unseen talent pool, the greater the number of picks accrued through trade, the larger the hype, the harder they believe.
The Leafs are following the organized-religion template – the more difficult it is to prove something, the more likely people are to cling to it. There is no pressure to arrive.
So what will next year look like? Were you paying attention this year? You weren't? Too boring? Good news. It's going to be a lot like that. Actually, it's going to be exactly like that.
Having won the Auston Matthews sweeps, the only pressure the Leafs will feel in 2016-17 is to find another like him.
That means another headfirst dive into the standings well. That means another year of unwatchable hockey at the NHL level, and huge strides taken by the obscure future stars.
How will people know that's what's happening? Because that's what the team is going to tell them. How will they know it's true? Because they want it to be. It's a tidy little circle. If they try it for another five years, it might even work.
(That moaning you hear in the background is coming from the accounting department at Rogers. Last year, you'd have said they bought BlackBerry just as the first iPhone was coming out. Now it looks as though they bought two Dixie cups connected by a string.)
Based on the last 20 years of No. 1 overall picks, the odds are Matthews will be a very good NHL player. There is a small but significant chance he will be a special one.
But as long as he isn't playing at the top level, he might be the greatest of all time.
The primary goal of the Leafs' executive is to extend the period between that hope and the reality for as long as possible. Every lost season they buy themselves is precious.
On that basis, the worst team in hockey is on a historic winning streak.
Follow me on Twitter: @cathalkelly
Cathal Kelly