Last year was different, the prize was Celebrini and the tear down had to be done by Grier. they also got hecka lucky winning 1OA as it had only a 25% shot.
The sharks got the best prospect they have ever drafted, and this year was supposed to be a trajectory upward. Instead they regressed, you just can't keep losing and drafting high picks and just expect winning to come.
They absolutely haven't regressed. At worst they've held about even. At best it's been a small tick upwards. They're only 11 points off last year's total with like 30 games to go.
I'm also not sure where you got the idea that "this year was supposed to be a trajectory upward."
Nobody, to the best of my recollection ever said that. At least nobody affiliated with team management. Fans may have thought it. You might think it, but that doesn't make it the actual situation. In fact I'm pretty sure I remember Grier saying a couple of years ago that this was not going to be a one-and-done thing.
And to later claims that this isn't how you build successful teams:
10 of the last 19 cups were won by LA, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Tampa Bay
Tampa: Drafted their 2 core players 1st (Stamkos) and 2nd (Hedman). Were in the top 10 in 5 out of 6 drafts between 08 and 13 (besides the other 2 I mentioned, they turned Drouin into Sergachev and a conditional 2nd that I can't track. Sergachev himself was a top 10 pick)
Chicago: drafted Toews and Kane 3rd and 1st overall respectively. Also drafted twice more in the top 10 in the 4 year stretch that included them.
Los Angeles: The outlier as they had Doughty at 2nd, and Schenn at 5th, a flop in Thomas Hickey at 4th, and then were generally just outside of the top 10 for the likes of Kopitar and other picks. So it's not like a pair of top 3 guys, but it is still 2 top 5 picks and they turned Schenn into Mike Richards before winning the cup twice with him.
Pittsburgh: Fleury (1st), Ryan Whitney (5th), Malkin (2nd), Crosby (1st), Jordan Staal (2nd) drafting in the top 5 for 5 straight years (including 1st or 2nd in 4 straight years). Whitney turned into Kunitz who was a big piece of their team (there was also some other stuff)
If we expand to the one-off teams:
Colorado drafted top 10 in 6 out of a 9 year stretch, getting them MacKinnon (1st), Makar (4th), Landeskog (2nd), Rantanen (10th), Byram (4th)
Florida had 4 top 5 picks in 5 years, netting them Ekblad (1st), Barkov (2nd), Huberdeau (3rd) who became Matt Tkachuk, and Eric Gudbranson (was dealt in a chain of deals that went from Jared McCann to junk).
The Blues had Pietrangelo in the top 5. They also drafted Erik Johnson 1st overall 2 years before Pietrangelo but the trades spun off from his dealing to Colorado didn't really end anywhere of consequence and this was well before they got the cup. So they're on the "it doesn't matter" side of things.
Boston is there too, as their top 10 picks were right around the time they actually won the cup, getting them Seguin (2nd) and Hamilton (9th) but they muffed both the trades to send those guys out of town.
And then there's Washington who got Ovechkin and Backstrom 1st and 4th with 2 years between them, but they were a bit part of that team's success for most of the next 2 decades. They also had Karl Alzner (5th) the year after Backstrom and he was fine but gone before the cup.
So if we are generous and count Washington, that's 3 of those 5 one-cup teams that had important pieces of their teams drafted from or acquired in trades using high end draft picks including a 1st overall and another top 5 pick in most cases. Add in that Pittsburgh, Tampa, Chicago, and LA as all benefitting from a couple of top 5 picks (or more if you're Pittsburgh)
The Sharks don't need to suck for 3+ more years. As much as I'd love Dupont especially if they don't come up with Schaefer this year, I don't see the problem with them being top 3 this season, maybe top 6 or 7 next year, and then they start the climb.
this is a bad team (by design and by necessity as they had to crawl out of the contractual hole DW left them with) and it's not going to suddenly become great. But being bad for another year or two is not going to kill them.
I do also get that they have Eklund and Smith as top 10 guys from the last few years but those also weren't tank years, so their window of high drafting is going to be extended because they came during hte dismantling and not during the bottoming-out-and-rebounding period.
