Both those teams were bad before the tear down though, not like they tore it down after winning the division.
Kings had already spent multiple years out of the playoffs, Rangers were on the down swing, Montreal is picking first this year and that wasn’t a planned tear down either, they ended up just being bad.
The comparisons for their tear downs would be the Flames when they did tear it down in 12-13. But at that point they were bad for a couple years already too.
There isn’t really precident for a team doing a tear down after making the playoffs 3 of 4 years and winning the division in two of those seasons. Of course if Gaudreau walks and Tkachuk refuses to re-sign then you have to think about it but there really isn’t precedent for it.
|