Denver/ Aurora and surrounding counties is about 3.6 million which is similar to Minneapolis/St.Paul. One side of my family has lived in Denver since the 1960s. Denver is all about the Broncos. The Avs drew flies when they were bottoming out. Just this weekend my Dad was talking about going to an Avs v Jets game a few years back in Denver and there were only 2 people sitting in his entire row himself and his buddy both wearing Jets jerseys.
The Broncos on the other hand....Season tickets are still being passed down in people's wills despite their poor play of the last few seasons.
There may be an unintentional bottom out here in 2 years time but I cannot see a purposeful one. Within a few months we should have a good idea of the leadership of this hockey club in the near future.
Waiting for, and allowing, the unintentional bottom out in 2 years time is the thing to really be avoided. It means passing up the opportunity to jump start the rebuild with the return on the outgoing core players. Multiply the length of the rebuild by a large amount (I don't specify because it is not something that has been measured, but it will be a lot).
There was a good case to be made for doing it this off-season. Tank for Bedard, but also for several other very high end prospects coming up in the '23 draft if you don't win the lottery. OTOH, this cap strapped, post Covid off-season was not the best one for getting returns on good players.
Whatever the reasoning, it was decided not to do that this year. Fine, we can look forward to an interesting and possibly exciting season with our new coaching staff. But the possibility of doing it next off-season will need to be carefully considered, regardless of how the team performs this year.
PLD not wanting to stay here long term has been a huge influence on the long term picture, IMO. If he stayed, we would have 1 top 6 C and possibly another in Perfetti. We would have had KC and Ehlers on the wings along with Lucius, McGroarty and Lambert + a few other possibilities like Rashevsky, Chibrikov. On D we would have had JMo, Samberg, Heinola, Chisholm +. That would have been a pretty good start on a rebuild that you could add the returns from traded players plus a few higher picks in the next couple of drafts.
But without Dubois, we are missing at least 1 and maybe 2 top 6 Cs. That alone sets the rebuild back quite a bit, unless we get very lucky in those next couple of drafts. But if we trade a lot of top players after this season the returns would fill in some of the holes.
I'm not saying blow it up after this season, but it will need to be considered. If Scheifele has a good season, they will be looking at extending him next off-season. Look for something like 7x9 on that next contract. That would take him till he is 38. Will that contract be good for the first 4-5 years? If so the last 2-3 would probably be acceptable, but look at the angst here with Wheeler, and he hasn't even fallen off a cliff yet. Similar story with Helle. Maybe a little smaller contract, unless he has another Vezina level season. In that case, it would probably be about the same as Scheifele's.
I think management needs to try to guess how well those players age. And it is just a guess. What factors do you even consider? Fitness? Career injury load and work load? Good seasons for each or bad, you need to consider probability of continued high level performance vs the probable trade return.
Dillon's and DeMelo's contracts both expire at that same time too. Not nearly as significant, but still a factor. Dillon will be 32 next off-season, DeMelo 30. Extend or trade?
