They finished last in 2004 after trading away a couple of their best players.
Further, they were in that position because of their penny pinching, meddling, ownership.
They made a concerted effort as an organization to go into the 2004 lockout with as much flexibility as possible to best position themselves in the new rules.
A concerted effort. Anticipated the need to be flexible, sold overpayed veteran players for draft picks and continued that process through the resolution of the lockout basically until they won. They were positioned to spend more in free agency because of their steps prior to the lockout and while teams like St.Louis auctioned off their best players to get under the cap, the Hawks were able to be spenders in free agency because of their cap space.
sucking is a by product of trading veterans for picks. Sucking hard like the oilers is as a result of being terrible and not having a plan.
Khabibulin kept them somewhat competitive and a healthy aucoin would have seen them finish slightly higher in the standings (but still top 10). With hindsight, they sucked worse because of injuries, but acting as if they sucked hard for a million years while trying to be good is flat out wrong.
Their lack of playoff success prior to getting kane and toews has much more to do with the Franchise being a wasteland because of ownership than it does any other reason.
It's like pointing to the Islanders as an example of a team who can't rebuild. They don't spend money, either, which is necessary to win.
It took the owner literally dying to pry the franchise out of his cold dead hand.
You're completely ignoring the history that is all contained in my post. They sold off to position themselves prior to an unknown labour dispute, followed a plan of building through the draft, no doubt because it was also cheaper to run a team on young players than top dollar free agents, and stayed true to their plan of continually turning over veteran players in exchange for draft picks.
The Flames are dead last now without having sold anything off. The Hawks finished dead last by continually dealing their players with value, not by holding onto a dead husk of a team, attempting to supplement the team by dealing away picks for ready-now players.
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