I hope people are taking all of these stanley cup champion stories to heart and really reflect on the timelines. It's easy for us out-of-market people to say 'yeah they drafted mackinnon and then won' but it was basically a decade after they drafted him. The Tampa Bay timeline was detailed earlier. Mathews was drafted ~8 years ago after Toronto tanked. Arguably Toronto has had a lot of things go their way, and they still haven't broken through.
Also, I think there is value to the mushy middle. The mushy middle is that stage of development where you have to learn to compete so that you can achieve a level of consistency in order to qualify for the playoffs. You can't magically hop over the mushy middle on the way up, and if you don't experience it on the way down then I would argue it's a sign you've lost the team for a good 5-6 years.
The mushy middle complaint is more a fantasy hockey-style view imo. You need to be in the mushy middle in order to be competing. And dropping through it to the bottom of the league is no recipe for success - it's just a recipe for high draft picks.
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