[gvitaly]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

All of those numbers are debatable. But for the two lowest ones - NYR never bottomed out, just a retool. And for PIT, they won a lottery and got the best player of the 21st century for it (along with 2 other HOFers, in a span of 2 years). If you can guarantee that we'll get a Crosby, then I'll buy into the 4 years for PIT argument, but otherwise, they are the fortunate exception, not a viable example.

Also, you can't just leave all the bad ones off the list (OTT, BUF, EDM, ARI) and list the most successful.

Even if you average it out, the average rebuild is not 20+ years, no matter how you spin it. I didn't think that NJD, or CAR are extremely successful rebuilds at this point. Also, EDM is 13 years. ARI was playing with league money, and didn't seem like it was attempting to build a contender as much as to save money on its rosters. OTT is 6 years into their rebuild, they went to the conference final 7 years ago. It's 12 years of not making the playoffs for BUF, but the handling of Eichel didn't help, 16 years since they were in the confernce final.

I calculated the numbers for a top 5 pick in another thread:

Spoiler!

Originally Posted by gvitaly

I wanted to add to the top 5 pick discussion, so here's the draft pick summary from 2004-2019.

You can argue that I miscategorized a couple of players, but this is just to give the general idea of the types of players we can get with each top 5 pick and the probability for each tier.

1. 1st overall:
   • Franchise Players (56%): Ovechkin(04), Crosby(05), P. Kane(07), Stamkos(08), MacKinnon(13), McDavid(15), Matthews(16), Dahlin(18), Hughes(19)
   • Top pair/First line (25%): Tavares(09), Hall(10), Ekblad(14), Hischier(17)
   • Second pair/Top 6 (13%): E. Johnson(06), RNH(11)
   • 3rd line/5th D (0%):
   • Bust/Depth (6%): Yakupov(12)
2. 2nd overall:
   • Franchise Players (31%): Malkin(04), Doughty(08), Hedman(09), Barkov(13), Eichel(15)
   • Top pair/First line (25%): Seguin(10), Landeskog(11), S. Reinhart(14), Svechnikov(18)
   • Second pair/Top 6 (19%): J. Staal(06), JVR(07), Laine(16)
   • 3rd line/5th D (19%): B. Ryan(05), R. Murray(12), Kaapo(19)
   • Bust/Depth (6%): N. Patrick(17)
3. 3rd overall:
   • Franchise Players (19%): J. Toews(06), Draisaitl(14), Heiskanen(17)
   • Top pair/First line (13%): Duchene(09), Huberdeau(11)
   • Second pair/Top 6 (38%): J. Johnson(05), Bogosian(08), Strome(15), PLD(16), Kotkaniemi(18), Dach(19)
   • 3rd line/5th D (25%): Turris(07), Gudbranson(10), Galchenyuk(12), Drouin(13)
   • Bust/Depth (6%): Barker(04)
4. 4th overall:
   • Franchise Players (25%): Backstrom(06), Pietrangelo(08), Marner(15) Makar(17)
   • Top pair/First line (13%): B. Tkachuk(18), Byram(19)
   • Second pair/Top 6 (38%): Ladd(04), E. Kane(09), R. Johansen (10), Larsson(11), S. Jones(13), Bennett(14)
   • 3rd line/5th D (6%): Hickey(07)
   • Bust/Depth (19%): Pouliot(05), G. Reinhart(12), Puljujarvi(16)
   
   
5. 5th overall:
   • Franchise Players (13%): Price(05), Pettersson(17)
   • Top pair/First line (40%): Wheeler(04), Kessel(06), B. Schenn(09), M. Rielly(12), E. Lindholm(13), Hanifin(15)
   • Second pair/Top 6 (20%): Alzner(07), Niederreiter(10), R. Strome(11)
   • 3rd line/5th D (13%): L. Schenn(08), Hayton(18)
   • Bust/Depth (13%): Dal Colle(14), Juolevi(16)
   • Not enough NHL games so far to even speculate: Turcotte(19)

Feel free to move players around between the categories if you think I got some of them wrong, but that's a good starting point. For example both Marner and Backstrom could be considered 1st liners, Hanifin a 2nd pairing D etc.

With the 1st overall, you essentially get an 80% chance to get either a top line or a franchise player. The rest of the top 5 picks give you a ~45% chance. Those are pretty good odds, especially if you bottom out for 3–4 years.