Quote:
Originally Posted by ComixZone
I argue that a building teams go into the off-season and signs Jonas Hiller, Deryk Engelland, and Mason Raymond to market value deals with term. They did that, and made it to the playoffs - and then went even further down that path by making "now" focused moves in 2015. They traded futures for Dougie Hamilton to help compete right away, extended a 32 year old Mark Giordano to a 6 year deal and were trying to make the playoffs.
Burke etc. all very openly said that the draft lottery was not part of a strategy that helps you win. Well, history has shown he was absolutely wrong and the modern NHL had passed him by.
Yeah, Treliving made some proactive in-season moves in this stretch (Glencross, Hudler trades), but he was doing very much what I'd consider a "re-tool on the fly" and not a rebuild. They didn't believe that drafting at the top of the 1st round was critical to building a winner, and Conroy has openly said the same thing (I believe it was in an interview with TSN or the Athletic where he openly acknowledged that yes, it means we won't draft at the top of the draft and we won't get a MacKinnon etc. because of it - I'll look for the interview to reference here)
Conroy seems to want to take the same approach Treliving did, and I imagine it will yield very similar results. The Flames will find some good players in the draft, but they won't acquire the players you need to build a championship and it's due to this philosophy of publically saying they don't want to establish a 'losing culture' despite the fact that they own one of the biggest losing cultures in the NHL.
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But you are focused on the results. Florida Panthers are 1 of your examples of a team who did right. Why, they simply got 4 top 3 picks in 5 years?
The first 2 years the draft top 3, they added Huberdeau and Gudbranson, the 2 guys they do not still have for this years cup run of the 4 top picks. Huberdeau played a huge part in landing Tkachuk though.
Florida in the summer of 2011 signed/resigned the following:
Jose Theodore - 35 years old #1 goalie had a good year for them
Tomas Fleischmann - 27 year old led their team in scoring with 60 points
Sean Bergenheim - 27 years old
Scottie Upshall - 27 years old
Marcel Goc - 28 years old
They had 32-year-old Brian Campbell who was a 50-point dman and they kept him the entire rebuild.
They had a young Markstrom that didn't get to play much in favour of 35-year-old Theodore. They also randomly made the playoffs the next year and still had all these guys the following year and added a young Huberdeau when then tanked to the bottom and got Barkov and Ekblad
Tank to get star players but most successful rebuilds just got the top picks a few times without this idea you need to trade everyone to get there.