Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
The owners are scared to death of what a rebuild would mean for the sustainability of the franchise, and it is hard to blame them with the examples on hand.
In more than 25-years a Canadian team has not managed to see a rebuild successfully through to a championship. The best result may have been the 2011 Vancouver Canucks, and it took nearly ten years and two management changes from the time the Sedins were drafted before they started to see tangible results.
Since then, the Winnipeg Jets have floundered in mediocrity, the Oilers remain an awful team after winning FOUR draft lotteries, and the Maple Leafs had to invest over $30 m on their top-three forwards without a single playoff-series win to show for it. The Flames were drawing fewer than 12,000 fans to watch hockey in the dark times, and seeing what Ottawa and Vancouver are suffering right now is enough to make them think twice about scorching earth.
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IMO It's a bit or a correlation vs. causation question...is the refusal to properly/patiently rebuild the reason for this sustained mediocrity Canadian teams?
There are a lot of different ways to screw up a rebuild, whether you're in Canada or the US. The Oilers and Leafs bottomed out the most and had the most luck, but it isn't that hard to see where they went wrong.
Most of the other CAD cities are the result of refusal to initiate rebuild and/or impatience once in it. The CAD teams do seem to fall into those traps the same...