Is Expansion Making Rebuilds More Difficult?

[x Tame Impala]

There is a problem with expansion and diluting talent in the league. There isn't an abundance of game-breaking talent and it is actually really rare. We're likely going to see a ton of teams go decades and decades without a Cup win, maybe indefinitely so. Lots of high draft picks end up busting or not being good enough to one degree or another.

So these rebuilds take 7+ years and by then the guy you drafted 7 years ago could be off the team or injured or disappointing and you're stuck in a perpetuity of crap. It's really hard to draft great players, even drafting top 5 you have to get very lucky, and it's really hard to navigate the cap to get sufficient value for your contracts when these guys are due for a big deal in their mid/late 20's. Let alone the near guarantee that any UFA you sign will be completely overpaid and not worth their cap hit by millions of dollars.

From the 2017/2018 season until currently, these teams are the lowest in Point% over this 7+ season timeframe...[SJS, CHI, ANH, MTL, AZ/UTH, DET, CBJ, OTT, BUF, PHI, NJ, VAN]. Which of these teams are on any sort of track to be even Cup contenders let a lone locks for a Cup win? The Devils are the closest followed by Vancouver, then we have a HUGE gap and none of these other teams are freaking close whatsoever. The Devils are 4th in the East for Point% and 5th in the league. Vancouver is 6th and 12th respectively.

The argument against expansion diluting the talent pool is that it gives all of these extra players opportunities to shine. If that's the case why do so many teams linger in what is at best bubble-team mediocrity? You have to be lucky enough to draft a true franchise talent when you're doing a full tear down rebuild and even then there are no guarantees. Chicago just got Bedard, arguably the most hyped draft pick since McDavid and Matthews and despite a very respectable prospect pool they're still years away from contending and that's entirely conditional on these draft picks reaching their potential, which is hardly a guarantee.

Roster construction is very, very, difficult and I'm not sure adding Vegas, Seattle, and they alleged two more teams is going to make things any easier. Building through the draft takes apparently nearly a decade and UFA's have terrible production to AAV values.

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[I Hate Blake Coleman]

Who cares if teams go decades between wins? The Chicago Cubs waited a century.

 

[ThatGuy22]

Rebuilding is hard because trying to be bad (,organization not players) sets in a bad culture. Edmonton's rebuild took a decade pre expansion. It included 12 first round picks including 8 top 10 until they finally got McDavid.

Buffalo similar, AZ similar. It's tough to make that culture change. Be bad on purpose makes it easy to excuse every loss, and that mindset is hard to shake.

Wasn't easier pre expansion unless you got lucky

 

[tsujimoto74]

Who cares if teams go decades between wins? The Chicago Cubs waited a century.

…in a league that is inherently competitively unbalanced because it has no salary cap or floor (and I say this as a Yankees fan). It’s one of the reasons baseball and the MLB are becoming less and less popular. Definitely not the league the NHL should aspire to be like.

 

[The Gr8 Dane]

Just gotta hope your team hires smart people

 

[DJJones]

It is kinda crazy that Chicago got Bedard and they'd still likely be better if they just kept their good young players instead of purposely sucking.

Couple years they'll be wishing they didn't waste Jones whole prime as well.

And that's a rebuild that went perfectly. Imagine if they had gotten Will Smith or something. Not knocking the guy, hell hes probably above average for that spot as well

 

[Thallis]

Theoretically it should make a rebuild easier since game breaking talent has a bigger gap in talent between them and the bottom of the NHL. The answer here is that a rebuild isn't a golden ticket. It gives you the best chance of a decade long competitive window, but the years after the teardown are perilous and require good personnel decisions by the gm and good development of your support prospects as well as the top ones.

 

[StreetHawk]

You need to be able to draft and develop beyond the top 5 picks of the draft. If you are trading all of your good players, you will get extra picks in the 20's plus extra 2nds in the 50's. If you can't turn them into anything, you won't succeed.

Not every 3OA pick is going to turn into a cornerstone.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

Mathematically yeah, expansion dilutes the talent pool in the entire league and makes it more difficult to accrue elite talent.

 

[Brookbank]

There is a problem with expansion and diluting talent in the league. There isn't an abundance of game-breaking talent and it is actually really rare. We're likely going to see a ton of teams go decades and decades without a Cup win, maybe indefinitely so. Lots of high draft picks end up busting or not being good enough to one degree or another.

So these rebuilds take 7+ years and by then the guy you drafted 7 years ago could be off the team or injured or disappointing and you're stuck in a perpetuity of crap. It's really hard to draft great players, even drafting top 5 you have to get very lucky, and it's really hard to navigate the cap to get sufficient value for your contracts when these guys are due for a big deal in their mid/late 20's. Let alone the near guarantee that any UFA you sign will be completely overpaid and not worth their cap hit by millions of dollars.

From the 2017/2018 season until currently, these teams are the lowest in Point% over this 7+ season timeframe...[SJS, CHI, ANH, MTL, AZ/UTH, DET, CBJ, OTT, BUF, PHI, NJ, VAN]. Which of these teams are on any sort of track to be even Cup contenders let a lone locks for a Cup win? The Devils are the closest followed by Vancouver, then we have a HUGE gap and none of these other teams are freaking close whatsoever. The Devils are 4th in the East for Point% and 5th in the league. Vancouver is 6th and 12th respectively.

The argument against expansion diluting the talent pool is that it gives all of these extra players opportunities to shine. If that's the case why do so many teams linger in what is at best bubble-team mediocrity? You have to be lucky enough to draft a true franchise talent when you're doing a full tear down rebuild and even then there are no guarantees. Chicago just got Bedard, arguably the most hyped draft pick since McDavid and Matthews and despite a very respectable prospect pool they're still years away from contending and that's entirely conditional on these draft picks reaching their potential, which is hardly a guarantee.

Roster construction is very, very, difficult and I'm not sure adding Vegas, Seattle, and they alleged two more teams is going to make things any easier. Building through the draft takes apparently nearly a decade and UFA's have terrible production to AAV values.

Possibly. Seems something has changed. Depth is spread out more thinly.

 

[lwvs84]

It's definitely going to be a lot harder. There are more options for free agents, more time between draft picks (the last place team's 2nd rounder is going to get later as more teams are added, means more chances a good player is picked before the second round), and less proven staff (coaches/GM's/etc) to go around. You're going to need good coaching/management and something else... either amazing drafting and development, buying your way out (if you're a city that can draw big names), or lottery luck. For example, Celebrini should speed up the Sharks rebuild by at least a couple years compared to whoever they would have picked at 2 or 3 if they would have dropped.

 

[Bombshell11]

They should have them all compete in the playoffs, all 32 teams, add 1 extra round to the format

 

[Bank Shot]

Rebuilding is hard because trying to be bad (,organization not players) sets in a bad culture. Edmonton's rebuild took a decade pre expansion. It included 12 first round picks including 8 top 10 until they finally got McDavid.

Buffalo similar, AZ similar. It's tough to make that culture change. Be bad on purpose makes it easy to excuse every loss, and that mindset is hard to shake.

Wasn't easier pre expansion unless you got lucky

That culture stuff is bullcrap.

Pittsburgh purposely tanked and won the Cup pretty soon after.
Washington purposely tanked and became a juggernaut during the regular season right away. Eventually won a cup.
LA Kings purposely list and won a Cup pretty soon after.
Edmonton's rebuild took as long as it did because they didn't get any franchise altering player with 1st overall the first few times. As soon as they got Mcdavid, they were very shortly doing damage in the regular season and playoffs.

Its not culture, it's roster.

 

[JKG33]

Not really. There's enough middling teams that'll never win the cup with their groups but also aren't bad enough with their current rosters to properly tank. Calgary, Detroit, NY Islanders, Minnesota come to mind on the lower end, NY Rangers, Toronto, Winnipeg on the higher end. And there's plenty of teams in between. If you figure 15-20 teams are in that purgatory, another 5-8 teams thatre true cup contenders. That leaves only 8ish teams thatre truly bottoming out. And if you look at some of those teams right now.. Anaheim, San Jose, Chicago, Montreal all have multiple top 5 picks recently.

The problem with tanking is not every draft is created equal. For every draft that has McDavid & Eichel or MacKinnon & Barkov where there's 2 (or more) players that're first overall quality in a normal year, there's also drafts like Power & Beniers or Slafkovsky & Nemec where there's not really any truly elite franchise-altering talent there.

 

[Bounces R Way]

It's an interesting question OP

I can see where you're coming from but I dunno. It seems like a lot of fans have it in their heads rebuilding is just drafting high automatically leads to being a contender. Just not how it works. You do have to draft well yes, you also have to make good signings, you have to have some savvy trades, and there's a fair bit of luck too. Hire good development staff, hire good coaches, have good facilities, foster good culture. A proper rebuild involves doing all those things.

The Stanley Cup is in my opinion the hardest trophy in sports to win for a reason. A hockey team is a lot of things. Talent is a major part of it yes but it's far from the only part. There's tons of young talent coming into the league and if you rely on only your top 10 draft picks you're not doing a good enough job at it. Go scout Liiga, find the AHL diamond out of Milwaukee, throw some big money at a cpl FAs but you better be damn sure it's the right ones. Expansion widens the talent pool but the teams that are consistently in the bottom aren't there by accident, just like the teams that are consistently at the top. You need to be well run and there's not a long list of guys who do that in this league. Rebuilds should be focused on finding the next one.

 

[PlayersLtd]

I'd say the concept of a rebuild really took off after about 2010, when the likes of Crosby/Malkin and Toews/Kane started winning cups. Prior to that teams were not ripping it down to the studs the same way or at least with the same frequency league wide.

We therefore only have 14 years of data and in that 14 years it would be an exaggeration to say that rebuilds aren't working. You have Toronto, EDM, FLA, COL and others who have rebuilt and are (or have been) competitive or highly competitive. You also still have lingering powerhouse teams (or stars) like BOS, TB, WAS, PITT that need to fully cycle out before the upstart rebuilds that you referred to can really emerge. So I would say the book isn't even close to being closed yet on this generation of rebuilds.

Also worth adding, the NHL and hockey in general is highly unpredictable. So no matter what you do you are still leaving a lot to chance. We are a lot more like the NFL than we are MLB and NBA and thank god for that.

At the end of the day OP is probably on to something but the most likely conclusion is that rebuilds are not the only way to be competitive nor are draft picks alone a guarantee to being competitive. But I bet this thread looks different in 10 years when the current rebuilds have gone through their complete cycle.

 

[Reality Czech]

Rebuilding is hard because trying to be bad (,organization not players) sets in a bad culture. Edmonton's rebuild took a decade pre expansion. It included 12 first round picks including 8 top 10 until they finally got McDavid.

Buffalo similar, AZ similar. It's tough to make that culture change. Be bad on purpose makes it easy to excuse every loss, and that mindset is hard to shake.

Wasn't easier pre expansion unless you got lucky

Good point. A lot of fans act like tearing it all down is some kind of guarantee of future success but there are probably more examples of rebuilding teams being stuck in purgatory than ones who won a championship. If you draft a Crosby or MacKinnon then obviously it increases the odds greatly but even the worst teams in the league don't have super high odds of landing a guy on that level.

There are a lot of Blues fans that wanted the team to totally tank but I think they're underestimating how miserable that 5-10 year period would be.

 

[Pavels Dog]

Which of these teams are on any sort of track to be even Cup contenders let a lone locks for a Cup win?

Zero teams are ever locks for that. Ever. Insane bar to judge by.

 

[Crow]

It is kinda crazy that Chicago got Bedard and they'd still likely be better if they just kept their good young players instead of purposely sucking.

Couple years they'll be wishing they didn't waste Jones whole prime as well.

And that's a rebuild that went perfectly. Imagine if they had gotten Will Smith or something. Not knocking the guy, hell hes probably above average for that spot as well

Why would Chicago care about wasting jones prime?

Have no idea how the rebuild is going to go at this point. It just started a couple years ago. Before that the hawks were bad but trying to win.

 

[TheSmokingMan]

For every team that did a successful rebuild down to the studs and became a contender, there are 2 that are stuck in a never ending rebuild cycle or mired in mediocrity. The biggest difference is the quality of the organizational leadership.

Successful organizations start with great leadership at the top (Ownership, President, GM). They have an unwavering strategic vision that builds a strong foundation for success and doesn't arbitrarily make changes depending on which way the wind is blowing.

Teams with competent leadership don't need to tank and hope for a lucky break to get the next McDavid. They know that you can accomplish the same goals through careful drafting, development, free agency, salary cap management, coaching staff, and creating a winning culture.

The teams that are perennially at the bottom of the standings, hoping to get lucky in the draft, will remain there until they have competent leadership. Teams that have strong leadership will thrive whether they have the 1st pick in the draft or the 32nd and it won't matter if there are 32 teams or 64, they'll still be winners.

 

[Nogatco Rd]

The argument against expansion diluting the talent pool is that it gives all of these extra players opportunities to shine.
If that's the case why do so many teams linger in what is at best bubble-team mediocrity?

Can you explain how the first sentence relates in any way to the second?

You have to be lucky enough to draft a true franchise talent when you're doing a full tear down rebuild and even then there are no guarantees. Chicago just got Bedard, arguably the most hyped draft pick since McDavid and Matthews and despite a very respectable prospect pool they're still years away from contending and that's entirely conditional on these draft picks reaching their potential, which is hardly a guarantee.

Chicago won 3 cups in the 7 years prior to your 7 year sample size.

You think it’s evidence that the system is broken because they don’t look like they’ll be competing for another anytime soon? Which, by the way, is completely intentional, as they’re currently tanking for their 3rd straight lotto pick.

Roster construction is very, very, difficult and I'm not sure adding Vegas, Seattle, and they alleged two more teams is going to make things any easier. Building through the draft takes apparently nearly a decade and UFA's have terrible production to AAV values.

In a world of perfect parity, each team would win a cup once every 32 years. Thats already a shit ton of waiting around between cups. Add in the expected variance that comes with some franchises being “better” than others at fielding teams, and you can expect some teams to win twice as often, and other teams to not win for twice as long.

Will it make it harder for any given team to win if they add more teams? I guess from an odds standpoint the answer is yes. But there are so many other variables which are in fact under a team’s control that IMO have a much more significant impact on a teams success or lack thereof.

 

[WarriorofTime]

It is kinda crazy that Chicago got Bedard and they'd still likely be better if they just kept their good young players instead of purposely sucking.

Need to understand the timeframe that a team is targeting. They’d be “better” in 2024-25 but probably still not too good and likely be a lot worse in 2029-30 when Bedard is 24 and the aforementioned are likely winding down.

Broader point on rebuilds is they take time and can be a bit cyclical based on when draft talent gets bunched and how the league ebbs and flows. It’s not a young man’s nhl right now. Most of the best teams were rebuilding at one point, perhaps ten years ago and accumulated much of their talent via high draft picks to kick off their periods of contention. Nonetheless, the league talent will turn over as it always does. If the current rebuilds are able to lock in good young talent on good contracts and not manage their assets poorly they will be well positioned for that next wave.