Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay Random
And precisely none of them finished at the bottom deliberately. Pittsburgh did it because they were virtually bankrupt. Chicago was coming out of the last and worst years of ‘Dollar Bill’ Wirtz. Tampa had been gutted by meddling owners who ran out of money and had to sell. It isn't a thing any owner does by choice, and it's hardly legitimate to criticize a GM for not blowing up the business without permission.
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Yup.
People talk about Tampa "rebuilding" the right way, but let's remember that they had Lecavalier and St. Louis on their roster throughout the entire stretch where they got Stamkos, Hedman, and Drouin as top-3 picks. The season where they drafted Stamkos, they started the year with Lecavalier, St. Louis, and Richards making nearly 40% of the available cap between the 3 of them. That was not a team whose goal was to tank. They badly misjudged things coming out of the lockout and overpaid their top forwards, and they did so before people figured out the various ways to tweak contracts to reduce the cap hit.
As bad as Chicago and Pittsburgh were, they still needed lottery luck to build their championship teams. The Pens would have still been a solid team without Crosby, but he certainly put them over the top. If the Hawks don't win the lottery in 2007, they're likely drafting Gagner or Voracek at 5th overall. In 2006, Toews wasn't guaranteed to be there at 3, nor was he guaranteed to be Chicago's pick at 3. That year had a very strong top-end. Do they win 3 Cups with Voracek and Kessel instead of Kane and Toews?
The only team that has really had success with a dedicated sell-off and rebuild was the Capitals... and even then, it took 14 years before they finally won the Cup (although, they did get a couple of President's Trophies along the way and were a perennial playoff team).