Looking back at what I see as the three main rebuilds, lot of mistakes made. The 90s rebuild was the worst. Gilmour deal obviously just crippling. But they also gave away many other stalwarts, with a failed approach of getting a similar guy who was slightly worse that was very short sighted. Like Suter for Zalapski, MacInnis for Housley. I think vernon went for Chiasson. Gary Roberts for Andrew Cassels. Downgrade everyone with cheaper replacement vets rather than go for youth. And then inexplicably gave away declining but still star players like Makarov and Mullen for almost nothing. It was as bad a rebuild/retool as you could imagine to go from a complete powerhouse loaded with high end talent to a middle of the pack group of older players in a very brief period of time. Riseborough in particular was just incredibly bad at what he did before he gained experience but money was a big driver.
Those late 90s drafts where they were doing a second retool after the fleury team were very weak classes looking back. The flames didn't exactly cover themselves in glory but was also bad timing to be rebuilding, not a lot of impact players and a tough era to come into the league with tons of clutch and grab, and trap. I still think Tkaczuk's injury in Phoenix was the pivot point though. He had top 6 centre written all over him, that injury was devastating. Young guns era was very brief. From the time Theo left to Iginla's rise was about 3 years of darkness. And for me I enjoyed it, lot of great personalities, super tough teams that fought for each other and beat the crap out of everyone and Freddy B was absolutely outstanding in net.
Post iginla rebuild they had a much weaker team but clearly waited too long and were handcufffed by NTCs. Ran down contracts and had few buyers got pennies on the dollar for Iginla and Bouw. Another bad GM timing wise with Feaster who didn't seem to be a strong negotiator. Frankly just got a bit lucky with Gaudreau popping late after everyone passed on him in the draft and Tkachuk falling to them unexpectedly. For me the bad trade in that era that made the difference was Phaneuf even though it was well before the rebuild proper. He was a young star player with a lot of value but wasn't shopped around the league to find the best value, and was traded for quantity rather than quality and again many older players.
This rebuild has been handled OK so far in my opinion, but at some point the team needs to realize that they need to pay the price in losses or assets to add 2 or 3 real star young players. You need something to build around re: star players and we don't have that yet or have it coming. If they keep targeting average players in their mid 20s we're headed for a long stretch of mediocrity.
This draft is a big chance for us... I won't openly cheer for them losing but falling to the Sharks tonight and we are tracking for a pick in the 5-7 range in what is a very good draft. A winning streak to end the season and we could be 10 and adding another more complimentary player.
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