I love that you immediately default to the Sabres and Coyotes since you can’t use the Hawks, Pens, Caps, Avs, Lightning, or kings to fit your narrative.
It’s really funny since Buffalo and Arizona did the exact same thing you want the hawks to do aim for being competitive even if it makes zero sense. Sabres landed eichel and immediately tried chasing the playoffs getting O’Reilly, Lehner etc while the team still had zero skill developing players and ended up having like 7 different coaches and GMs.
Arizona did the same thing adding Stepan Raanta, Kessel, to be competitive only to get bent over the Avs in the Covid playoffs.
Coyotes have given up trying to chase being an 8 seed in the playoffs and now have a ridiculous amount of prospects and young players their future is a lot brighter than you’d like to admit all they need is patience and stability.
Sabres are good now after you guessed it sticking with a GM and Coach for more than one season and now are one of the most exciting teams to watch.
You can’t force contention and rebuild over the season