Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
You don't want a true rebuild to go on too long, but what if by principal it never ends?
I think a market like Calgary ... one that is likely on the list of the bottom ten most desirable places to play these days (would improve with winning and a new building, but the US vs Canada thing is real) should be more proactive and almost stay in a perpetual rebuild.
Set some mandates to loosely follow (a rule but one that can be deferred in winning seasons):
- don't sign players past their mid 30s
- don't have more than two key players as UFAs in the same season
- never walk a player to free agency if he has value
- never go into a draft with less than 7 picks
Keep the roster turning over with a large band of young players, prospects and picks, and look for that lightning in a bottle period of two or three years.
If you draft and develop well you would be a solid hockey team for a long long time and wouldn't be betting on an aging core to make the playoffs past their due date.
|
I couldn't agree more with this approach. To me it's more of a constant succession planning rather than truly rebuilding but I just wonder how we get to the place where we have enough of a solid enough asset foundation to do that. It only really works if you have enough of an asset base to be competitive to start with which takes being bad or being lucky. As much as scouting involves work there's a ton of luck involved in the player development when they aren't even playing for your program for the first 2-4 years after being drafted.
And I think citing "the Dallas model" is some deceptive stuff to be honest. Teams hit a homerun in the draft like dallas did in the heiskenen year incredible rarely and even when they did that they picked much higher than the flames. It's like saying, let's rely on luck and hope all our not great picks turn into stars.
I think the fans here would accept two years of weaker teams and frankly I think if Markstrom moves that's what they're doing anyway, just saying the right things in the media while doing something else knowing that Kadri, Andersson, Backlund etc will lose their minds and ticket sales might tank if they do anything else.