You are basically hoping for a Colorado like mini-tank and subsequent turnaround, and it has to be stated and acknowledged that Colorado got massively lucky / executed it incredibly. It’s more likely than not that the Canucks would emerge after the two years as a bad team with a bunch of holes with perhaps a couple extra good to very good level prospects / young players. It’s unlikely we unearth a Makar or Toews, or really end up turning this franchise around, and to MS’ point, we have then lost two years on our core’s prime. So I don’t think heavily criticizing this team for not taking this option makes sense. Plus, we could still get lucky with trades going the route this management has chosen as you could going the route you proposed.
Ultimately, I am patient and would prefer just a full rebuild. But as has been stated it really isn’t realistic to expect ownership to do a full year down after 7 years of shit. I suspect this is what they will do if we still suck in 3-4 years though.
We don't need to land a Makar or Toews, although that would be a bonus and make it a lot easier. The goal would have been to be in LA's position where you're a bubble team but you have a ton of assets to use to make moves.
We can all agree we're a bubble team this year right? We're not a bad team - the gigantic issue is that we have nothing left to use to make moves - capped out with no farm - and we have a big stack of fat UFA contracts on players whose age curve is not expected to go well so the clock is ticking.
Becoming a bubble team is the easiest thing in the world. A team with literally no GM - a literal potato as a GM - that drafts off of a public list and only re-signs their own players will eventually become a bubble team by pure entropy. It takes nothing to become a bubble team but it takes a generationally bad and stupid GM to finish a rebuild as a bubble team that's capped out with no farm and overcommitted to UFA's.
The trick is maneuvering from a bubble team to a contender. My goal is to watch this team win the stanley cup so I don't see the "losing two years of this teams prime" as being a loss if we aren't contenders for that time period anyways.
This is just playing videogames and not operating in real life.
Again :
No NHL team ever would do what you're saying when you're in the roster position we're in.
Nobody has the appetite for this and it would be an absolutely atrocious business decision.
Trade markets on guys like Miller were totally dead. My preference was to trade him for a haul, too. Turns out it wasn't an option.
3 years from now you've left yourself with Demko/Pettersson staring at UFA and you've rebuilt so long you've actually taken youself to a place where you really do need to rebuild.
It's not that different than how Yzerman operated in Tampa Bay, except that he didn't have to overcorrect a previous moron GM's mistakes halfway through the build. And being willing to be patient and stockpile is pretty much his superpower as a GM, along with whatever he does to player development.
We don't know what the trade market was last year. Rutherford was rejecting calls on players well into 2022. There doesn't seem to have been a serious effort to make these trades or build a market. We only know the opening offer from one team at the deadline that we didn't negotiate on. By the time free agency hit it was much too late to do something like this plan.
Per your last sentence, absolutely. That's part of it. This has been an absolutely miserable decade and nobody - from ownership to players to fans - has an appetite for another 3-5 years of pointless losing hockey. I want being a fan to be fun again. I want to cheer for wins.
And as I said a few times, if armchair message board quarterbacks were running NHL teams there would be 5 'contenders' at any given point and 27 teams frantically trying to lose every game to get the #1 overall pick. And that just isn't how it works in real life. Some teams are lucky enough to have a Pittsburgh cycle. Most are not and are trying to open windows from sub-optimal circumstances. This is what we did in 2008. This is what Calgary and Florida have done the last couple years.
Saying in absolutes that there is no way this team can become a contender in the next few seasons is a good way to end up looking foolish.
I disagree. I think we are in the situation we are in with so much discontent because we have been on the no-plan plan, compete every year schtick for so long. Everyone can get on board with a clear plan and upward trend.
What angers and burns out players and fans is spinning your wheels going nowhere, or regressing when you're supposed to be competing, or staring down the barrel of a long rebuild. A two year reload doesn't trigger any of those conditions, but failing our current plan might.
And I didn't say there is no way to become a contender in the next few seasons. I said we are not a contender and we have to win trades to become a contender, which the hardest thing to do in this league. If the goal is to win the cup, and I'm aware that's not the #1 priority, they've chosen the hardest path forward possible.
