There have been a couple developments in the NHL that have had dramatic effects on roster construction and team success, yet it doesn’t seem like every front office has taken them into account.
The full tear-it-all-down rebuilds seem to be getting harder to pull out of, and it sure seems like there are better ways to turn things around. Yet we watch as struggling teams continue to look at their teams and go, “This player we have is good, somebody will want him, let’s sell him too.”
In many cases, these teams strip their roster for parts, then find themselves panicking when, several seasons later, the promise of hope they sold through their prospects slowly disintegrates as it becomes clear they just drafted more average players. Teams should be learning that you can’t burn the crops and salt the earth without the ensuing periods of privation.
The Detroit Red Wings have had horrific draft lottery luck, often dropping spots and never getting the top-end talent they’ve sought, which leaves them on the verge of missing playoffs for the ninth straight season.
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The Buffalo Sabres tore it all down and drafted in the top 10 for ten straight years (including first twice and second twice), and they’ve missed the playoff 13 straight years and will again this year.
Even teams that made it out of the darkness after periods of struggle – think LA and New Jersey – would point to needing some luck for things to get right again finally, and even now, they’re not promised wild success.
Looking at things now, the Montreal Canadiens will need somewhere between “a lot” and “all” of their prospects to hit to get competitive anytime soon, barring they change courses and start adding present-day talent.
So let’s get back to those “couple developments” that I mentioned off the top, which are that one, the addition of two new teams in Vegas and Seattle has meant an additional 50 or so players have entered the league. Two, the pandemic-induced flat salary cap has squeezed the flexibility out of rosters.
Both have become opportunities, not limitations.
The additional players have watered down the product to a small degree, which has made for a bigger “mushy middle” of the standings. It’s felt like the league has had about 5-6 very good teams each year, and 5-6 lousy ones, and then about 20 damn near interchangeable rosters. That’s not meant as criticism, but as an observation that incremental positive changes to your roster can go a long way to climbing above the pack. (And shocker, fans care a lot about that.)
This past off-season, the Washington Capitals were coming off a year where I’ll just say it, they stunk. And yet, they made playoffs. They were a minus-37 goal differential team who snuck into the final wild-card spot on a tiebreaker, then went like lambs to the slaughter to the New York Rangers in four straight games. They were looking older, as superstar Alex Ovechkin was approaching 40, Nick Backstrom and TJ Oshie weren’t likely to be able to contribute going forward, and John Carlson wasn’t getting younger.
But instead of blowing it up and trying to get some high draft picks, they tried to get more good players (what a concept!), a move that some scoffed at as being in denial. They added Jakob Chychrun and Matt Roy to the back end, they traded for Pierre-Luc Dubois and signed Andrew Mangiapane too. With more good players throughout the lineup, their young players were suddenly better insulated, and that meant they got huge strides from young players like Aliaksei Protas and Connor McMichael.
That’s a huge part of their story: when you get real NHL players, the players you’re developing have a better chance to succeed, too. And with that comes confidence, and in turn you get the most out of them. The growth is exponential.
Because of that vast “mushy middle,” getting a bit better has meant the Caps could climb to first in the Eastern Conference through 31 games. They just left the middle straight up.
The St. Louis Blues are stubborn too. Instead of saying, “We won our Cup, now we have to bottom out to try again,” they’ve continued trying to win, and part of their success comes from utilizing the flat salary cap jamming up everyone else’s books.
In a widely publicized move, they pilfered two young legitimate talents from the Edmonton Oilers via offer sheet, landing Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg, both of whom look like NHL contributors. That doesn’t happen without taking advantage of another team’s tight cap.
But also, with that salary limit, you get teams who are in desperate situations to move players or money when they’re close to Cup contention, and you’re often able to acquire decent players as a result. I doubt if the NHL were without a salary cap, the Rangers would’ve traded Jacob Trouba. They would’ve just figured he’s overpaid, ho-hum, and used him as a third pair guy rather than trading him to better use their allotment of dollars. Teams have to get value out of their contracts to win in a tight cap world, and so sometimes decent players became available (see also: the aforementioned PL Dubois, who isn’t valued, but also isn’t bad).
The Blues also did well here by adding Cam Fowler for just $4 million per season, as maybe he’s not worth $6.5, but he’s an NHL vet who can provide some stability for them, and can help them navigate their way up through the mushy middle into the playoff fight. Colton Parayko needed a partner.
The point isn’t “Can the Blues win the Cup this year,” but it’s about insulating your young players with real NHL ones, and helping them do what Protas and McMichael have done. It also helps the Blues get into games that matter (like a playoff race, and maybe the playoffs), which is great for their development too.
The Blues are currently awaiting the arrival of five recent first-round draft picks, at least three of whom will likely join their team next season. It would’ve been easy to just lose out this year and say, “Help is on the way,” as so many other teams are, but they’re a reminder that you can still try and win while developing your own prospects and giving them a chance to succeed.
When I watch the Buffalo Sabres these days, it’s felt like years of the mentality “The prospects are coming to save the day” come home to roost, while management has been content to do nothing to help the team but wait for humans to age. (The Montreal Canadiens are selling some of that these days too.)
But as you’ve likely heard me say before, every team has prospects, and while a bad team’s prospects may be better, even significantly better, these teams have dug holes so big that “our few young players coming are going to be better than the ones you have coming” isn’t going to make up the 30-point gap they’ve left to playoff contention, let alone Cup considerations.
Mediocre-to-bad teams need to be more active now, even if they aren’t trying to win this year’s Cup. Yes, they want the best draft picks available, but with the lottery there’s some luck involved, and trading for a Jacob Trouba or Cam Fowler or whoever the Rangers trade next isn’t going to suddenly make a bad team win so much that they end up drafting from a totally different tier. And even flawed players like Trouba or Fowler are better than whatever the bottom of most rosters looks like.
You might think Nashville is a counterpoint to the one I’m making, but their flaw wasn’t in recognizing that they needed to add – they did, and do need to add – but rather in recognizing what they needed to add. They weren’t a couple older scoring vets away from more wins, their team last year overachieved its true talent a great deal, and they need legitimate play drivers. (And still, I think there are better days ahead for the Preds, who probably aren’t this bad.)
There are certainly exceptions to be made for the truly awful teams in the league who are trying to draft first overall. They might as well have a single season of freefall and see if they can land a generational talent. But even then, they should hit the gas and start trying to win.
Those teams aside, this message is mostly aimed at the 20 teams in the mushy middle.
The league is too big, and money has been too tight to have the plan “just bottom out and wait.” You can turn it around quicker than that. Teams that have tried to win despite just being average are being rewarded. It won’t always work out (that’s sports), but at least your fans can have pride enough that when they go to games they’re rooting for your team to actually win, rather than punting on whole seasons for the hope that some 18 year old can help them when he’s 22.
The true cost of extended rebuilds damages franchises in ways beyond wins and losses, as the competition for the fans’ disposable income is more hotly contested than ever. There are too many reasons to try to start winning today and to stop failing on purpose for incrementally better picks. Teams and even fans have become too permissive of accepting losing as the “plan.”
Teams should try to win. Crazy, right? This huge group of middling teams is going to thin out as the cap rockets up, and good teams can afford to keep all their good players. If you don’t get climbing now, you could get stuck in the pit.
