Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkGio
I think that's one way to doing it. Look at Vancouver, they have Baertschi, Virtanen and Horvat developing at the NHL level while having "over-the-hill" Sedins and Vrbrata hold the fans over who desire a competitive hockey club. It's rebuild on the fly vs. scorched earth. I think a rebuild is very much justified on what parts you have to build from.
I think to say there's only one way to rebuild a franchises core assets is naïve or arrogant.
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There's not only one way. But I think Vancouver would be best served trading some of their best players for more picks/prospects and then drafting higher to get a franchise player.
If you're rebuilding on the fly and not drafting top 5 you'd better have some of the best scouting in the league because it's really hard to find franchise players outside of that top 5. Detroit makes it work because of amazing scouting.
I think the scorched earth policy of getting rid of all your good vets (EDM route) is dangerous because your players can get bad habits, lose confidence, develop poorly on a crappy team. Hard to develop defenders when they are scared to make a mistake because your goalie can't make saves. Hard to develop goalies when your defense is so terrible that they are giving up prime opportunities all the time.
BUF's rebuild is going way better than EDM's because they did the scorched earth for one year while accumulating a ton of assets heading into that year (I think they drafted twice in the first round in three straight drafts IIRC.) They had their one horrible, horrible year where the reward is a franchise player (Eichel) but after accumulating a ton of young assets they manage to turn some of them into players who can play now (Kane, O'Reilly, Bogosian) to compliment their young core. EDM has never done that because they are worse at drafting and haven't had the balls to deal one of their young kids to solve some holes on the team.
CGY's rebuild is a bit middle of the road cause we've never had a horrible, horrible year. We traded off Iginla and Bouwmeester and managed to get Monahan in a deep draft. Then we have the one pretty unlucky year where we were lucky to draft top 4 and get a potential franchise player in Bennett. Some good scouting got us Gaudreau/Brodie in the 4th round. IMO if we can land a top 5-7 prospect this year we're most of the way to having the key core pieces to build a contender because I think we might get another 1st line/1st pairing guy this draft. Then this offseason I'd expect us to make a trade where we move some picks/prospects/young players for guys heading into their prime or in their prime similar to how BUF acquired Kane/O'Reilly.