Quote:
Originally Posted by The Voice of Reason
It would be shockingly forward thinking for any team, one year removed from the Stanley Cup finals, to have people within the organization stand back and be able to say "You know what, that cup run was a fluke. This team is deeply flawed and needs to be sold off now while values are still high"
The Flyers did that to a certain degree with their 2010 team. I would certainly give them credit for not just assuming their team was going to stay great, instead moving high priced guys out for very good young players.
|
This is an excellent point and I agree with Sylvan that the Flyers may be the closest example but I really don't see that as a team rebuilding. For all of their warts I respect the Flyers organization for probably being the most pro-active forward looking franchise. They lost in fairly convincing fashion in the Finals and chose to swap core players for a new core of guys emerging through their system along with prospects they got back in trades.
Besides the Flyers though, NHL teams are notoriously conservative in their efforts to build a team. It's not necessarily a bad thing, because the players they're drafting are probably the most risky out of the other NA professional sports NHL teams tend to value the bird in hand much more. I would argue that even accounting for this, teams are still overly conservative. It's a cultural thing in the NHL where personal relationships are still very strong drivers of transactions.
Compare that to the NFL where if there is even the faint whiff that a player may not be a part of your team making the next step and you're cut.
That's why the story of the Flames in the past three years is just so depressing to me. Instead of building a contender it became very apparent that the team was about keeping people happy. We've lost three years because of it.