Quote:
Originally Posted by ComixZone
Okay, let’s look at only the last 5 years.
Tampa -> Stamkos, Hedman
Tampa -> Stamkos, Hedman
St. Louis -> Pietrangelo
Washington -> Ovechkin, Backstrom
Pittsburgh -> Crosby, Malkin, Fleury
Championship teams have at least one centre and/or defenceman drafted at the top of the draft.
Championships are won by teams with elite players. The Flames haven’t drafted anything close to an elite player since Tkachuk, and before that Gaudreau - unfortunately both are wingers.
If the goal is to win a Championship, the team needs to be rebuilt. They don’t have the pieces required to win, and they can’t acquire them (although Vegas seems to have done just fine on that front). The team is just doing what they always do - aggressively spend (and overspend) in free agency to try and patch together a team good enough to make playoffs (and they fail at that as often as they succeed), but nowhere near good enough to win a Championship.
Yes - you need to be a top tier team when it comes to drafting/management on-top of drafting elite talent at the top of the draft. That’s an absolute necessity. When you look at Buffalo and Edmonton, outside of drafting Eichel, McDavid, and Draisaitl those two teams have been complete garbage at drafting and managing their NHL rosters. As critical as I am of Tree, he runs the team generally pretty well and is able to pull NHL’ers from all over the draft - but he can’t overcome the lack of elite talent at the top of his roster.
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Tampa -> Stamkos, Hedman - both players drafted before the draft lottery rules changed
St. Louis -> Pietrangelo - drafted before the draft lottery rules changed
Washington -> Ovechkin - illegal contract, Backstrom - illegal contract - All players drafted before draft lottery rules changed
Pittsburgh -> Crosby - illegal contract, Malkin, Fleury - All players drafted before draft lottery rules changed
None of your examples are teams that rebuilt since the 2012 lockout. Washington won 12 years after getting AO and Backstrom?
Tampa has done a ton since getting Hedman and Stamkos 12 or so years ago?
Pittsburgh drafted Crosby 17 years ago. They won 1 cup while Malkin and Staal were on ELC's and then it took years on a illegal deal win again.
Examples of rebuilds that happen during or after 2012.
Colorado - contender ( better win this year or next because Mackinnon is about to break the bank)
Toronto - maybe a contender
Florida - contender but also on the verge of cap hell
Edmonton - lol
Buffalo - time to rebuild again
Arizona - constant rebuild
NYR - not sure if it is really a rebuild as they were very luck to get Lafreniere so really 1 year of rebuilding to get Kakko
Chicago 2.0 - still rebuilding
LA 2.0 - still rebuilding
IMO long rebuilds are not the way to go. If needed a short retool works better. Most team that did the long rebuild wasted the ELC's of their stars and have been in cap hell since they had to resign these players. I'm not against tanking for a year to get a star but doing the 3-5 years in a row thing is no longer the model way to build a contender.