Rebuild | Measuring Ours Against the Precedents

[conFABulator]

Literally NONE of the last 10 Cup winners lost more than 2 consecutive 1st round playoff series before going deep into the playoffs.

The last 10? Well, now we have LA and Chicago in there.

LA missed the PO four times after drafting Kopitar and then got eliminated in the first round twice before winning their first cup. They never won a round before winning a cup.

I mentioned Chicago above. They never won anything until they went to the conference final the year before the cup.

There is no doubt that the Leafs never winning a round is a bad and negative outlier. However, most teams do not have a lot of success in their first 6+ years. Everyone but the Leafs missed the playoffs one or more times too.

Maybe we did rush a rebuild, maybe we should have missed the PO a few more times to slow build? I don't think so, but if this group doesn't win a cup then there is no way I could say my opinion is correct.

 

[robertmac43]

Obviously, every rebuild/case is slightly different, but I think it is important to put the timing into perspective.

 

[Knies iT]

You can't start Toronto's timeline from Rielly, because we really didn't rebuild that time. It was just one more failed year, that Burke benefit from. In hindsight you should start Blackhawks rebuild from drafting Keith, but basicly, it started years after and that organizational capital is always there, when you start rebuild. Change of vision and culture is more or less the start point. Early 2010s we tried to compete and the vision was to retool that bunch of mediocrity to cup winner with trade magic.

It nice to have hindsight on those moves, but you should always have some understanding over context and maybe look it from other franchises stand point also. You wont win every transaction, all top teams bleed assets. Slowly but steadily. It's name of the game at the moment with hard cap.

Marchment and Verhaeghe given free is nice statement of AHL players back then, that took years to develop after that. You can't keep two teams of worth of AHL players in the AHL. Marleau could have been kept, but that would have mean one lost season from this core, in hindsight easy to say that keep him for year since we lost anyway. You can pile that up with Kadri's trade and say that we shouldn't have signed Tavares, but in the end we'd lost Kadri now and don't have replacement here. That Kapanen take is terrible, it was good trade for us that ended up being real bummer, because of the cancer. Why is it there?

If I make one reasonable take now and here, because it's hindsight. I look up that list and say, we could have made slower build. Trade away those assets we had and don't push into playoffs. Don't sign Tavares at all. Would it have been better, might have been, but you never know. In reality we we're bubble team when we really tried and ended up being playoff team straight away. If you look other failed rebuilds it isn't that easy to become perennial playoff team with +100p seasons.

There is one big clear mistake, we didn't draft Aho instead of Dermott. I would have also changed Holl for McCann now and it can be argued if we could have made that decision even back then? But though Holl have progressed every year until now his development went backwards. That Holl-Muzzin could have been really good second pair like it was earlier.

Then show me a comparable list of lost assets from the other contenders listed. The Leafs have egregious misses over that time, it's not just typical turnover and spending at the deadline.

Why is the Kapanen point there? Because losing your highest pick since Matthews is entirely relevant when talking about an anticipated rebuild timeline? Having nothing to show for the Kapanen trade is not an indictment on management, it is a reality of the current situation.

RE Verhaeghe and Marchment - you can defend it all you want, they are outright bad losses with nothing to show for it. The former was traded as an OHL product, not an AHLer. Marchment also did not take "years" to develop after being traded, he was a fixture on a contender immediately post-trade and had a breakout season one year post-trade. Verhaeghe stings less because he's benefitted from multiple development orgs., but Marchment was completely given up on after significant development investment and was NHL ready.

I didn't get into the draft misses too much, as you could argue Debrincat over Korshkov and Aho over Dermott, but that's mostly speculation. The Konecny pick was such an overthink as he was a no-brainer, consensus faller with big profile who was right in your lap.

Main point in all of this - the Leafs have bled more assets than the keystone contenders (across multiple GMs) and have nothing to show for it, so their timeline will be much longer if they do ever win at all. Their late round drafting of recent is the only thing staving off a retool.

 

[conFABulator]

Then show me a comparable list of lost assets from the other contenders listed. The Leafs have egregious misses over that time, it's not just typical turnover and spending at the deadline.

Why is the Kapanen point there? Because losing your highest pick since Matthews is entirely relevant when talking about an anticipated rebuild timeline? Having nothing to show for the Kapanen trade is not an indictment on management, it is a reality of the current situation.

RE Verhaeghe and Marchment - you can defend it all you want, they are outright bad losses with nothing to show for it. The former was traded as an OHL product, not an AHLer. Marchment also did not take "years" to develop after being traded, he was a fixture on a contender immediately post-trade and had a breakout season one year post-trade. Verhaeghe stings less because he's benefitted from multiple development orgs., but Marchment was completely given up on after significant development investment and was NHL ready.

I didn't get into the draft misses too much, as you could argue Debrincat over Korshkov and Aho over Dermott, but that's mostly speculation. The Konecny pick was such an overthink as he was a no-brainer, consensus faller with big profile who was right in your lap.

Main point in all of this - the Leafs have bled more assets than the keystone contenders (across multiple GMs) and have nothing to show for it, so their timeline will be much longer if they do ever win at all. Their late round drafting of recent is the only thing staving off a retool.

I think this is a far consideration. If we are making moves that set out development as a contender and champion back, then we need to look at them. These could be the reason "just being patient" isn't a good strategy just because other teams were. Did they "bleed" prospects too?

I think Verhaeghe is a good example of lost prospect, Marchment too. Both were young and had potential and were traded for sub optimal returns.

Verhaeghe was one of 5 contracts deemed to have tittle to no value. It was a move to open up contract spots. One of them should not have been given up obviously.

Marchment was obviously a misjudge of talent and potential. He may not have fit the organizational style and philosophy and was going to be a UFA at a young age...but it was a mistake.

Kapenen was cap management, just like Jonsson (and Connor Brown). You can't overpay the third line. If Amirov is healthy right now we might feel differently about this one. I don't think Kapanen was top 6 and I don't think he is better than Engvall or Mikheyev...certainly not more than twice the cap hit.

A lot of the missteps listed above fall to Lou and the pre-Dubas era. We changed GMs, all the other cup winners did also -- so they must have missteps too, no?

 

[PromisedLand]

Context:

- 50% of cap on 4 forwards (is it comparable to some other team?)
- #1G and #1D (where are these?)
- Progress: Is your metric only Cup? what about winning a round, 2 rounds, conference finals; making progress one by one? Seems like other teams you are using as comparison did do that. Gives management team more tools to evaluate what is needed in terms of tweaks/additions (or substractions) to advance futher or make further progress

This is quite frankly not a complete and concrete analysis

 

[Racer88]

While I can appreciate the thought that went into that post. It would be interesting to know what the cap distribution throughout their rebuild and journey to the cup.
that is the entire issue as far as I’m concerned. Did any of those teams mentioned in that post commit 50% of their cap to 4 forward. Until that is answered those examples are not relevant.
more tweaks and minor changes will not fix this team

 

[Menzinger]

The Leafs rebuild has been steady - they leapfrogged Buffalo who have shown that drafting high in of itself is no guaranteed path to contender ship - and has been more steady than the Oilers who have essentially gone through two full cycles of high end draft assets (Holl and RNH years vs McDavid, Leon) ect.

What the Leafs need to start doing is getting impact players from outside the top of the draft. Dubas' did well with some recent free agent adds like Kampf and Bunting. But the team really needs it's drafting and development group to churn out some top 9 forwards/top 4 D men. Sandin and Lily look like solid adds to the back end. Now need to beef up the forward group.

 

[Havoc]

While I can appreciate the thought that went into that post. It would be interesting to know what the cap distribution throughout their rebuild and journey to the cup.
that is the entire issue as far as I’m concerned. Did any of those teams mentioned in that post commit 50% of their cap to 4 forward. Until that is answered those examples are not relevant.
more tweaks and minor changes will not fix this team

stop making excuses for the bottom 6 (indirectly).

caps (looks confusing with caps/cap...caps = Washington) bottom 6 cost like 10 mil on their cup run.

how can people hate management for the 50% distribution but at the same time so lenient on them having an out for the bottom 6 because of cap?

Cap is not an issue for the depth. These guys are simply not choosing winners in the bottom 6, that's it.

 

[Menzinger]

Pretty sure the Bolts spend less on their bottom six than the Leafs re team cap structure

 

[conFABulator]

Context:

- 50% of cap on 4 forwards (is it comparable to some other team?)
- #1G and #1D (where are these?)
- Progress: Is your metric only Cup? what about winning a round, 2 rounds, conference finals; making progress one by one? Seems like other teams you are using as comparison did do that. Gives management team more tools to evaluate what is needed in terms of tweaks/additions (or substractions) to advance futher or make further progress

This is quite frankly not a complete and concrete analysis

Well, it is not a concrete and complete analysis. I think it said as much in the post.

To answer your question though: Yes, the only metric is winning the Stanley Cup. Is there any other measure of success? Why does winning rounds matter if we don't win a cup? This is is why San Jose is not listed here I guess. What other measure of success should we be looking at?

Is your issue that you think the Leafs having too much tied up in four forwards will prevent us from winning a cup. That's a fair position to take. I see some other comments on here asking "why does that matter?". Do you feel we should be spending more on a goalie? Our D? Bottom six?

Maybe this is what your question means about #1G and #1D. I am not sure you phrased it somehow these are missing from the analysis when I clearly ask the question of how does our rebuild differ from others? I guess your answer is thaf we don't have a Matt Murray and a Kris Letang? Is that right? Or a Carlson and Holtby? A Pietrangelo and a Binnington?

Yes, TB has Hedman and Vasilevsky. Clearly a team that has the best D and best G in the world on their team is going to be successful. I am quite sure it is not a replicable blueprint though.

 

[conFABulator]

What the Leafs need to start doing is getting impact players from outside the top of the draft. Dubas' did well with some recent free agent adds like Kampf and Bunting. But the team really needs it's drafting and development group to churn out some top 9 forwards/top 4 D men. Sandin and Lily look like solid adds to the back end. Now need to beef up the forward group.

I agree with this.

When this rebuild started, Shanny preached patience and we all talked about the "Detroit model" of drafting low and overbaking our prospects with long development cycles.

How different does this team look next year if Sandin and Lilly are too 4 d? If Robertson cracks the top 6? I am not predicting it happens, I am saying it does change the dynamic quite a bit.

 

[conFABulator]

Here is another way to look at it. Rather than cherry picking a few bad moves (Dubas and pre-Dubas) and not discussing any of the good ones let's try to keep this on topic (there are already a few Dubas threads on these boards).

The topic here, is how is our rebuild doing when compared to others; to other contenders, to recent champions and to other re-builders.

The year we bottomed out and started the re-build we tanked, we wanted McDavid and we tanked. We lost the lottery and got Marner. Not a bad consolation prize.

Look at who also bottomed out that year, the bottom ten in the league that year were:

Buffalo
Arizona
Edmonton
Toronto
Carolina
NJ
Philadelphia
Columbus
San Jose
Colorado

Which of these teams have rebuilt better than us. Carolina? Colorado (started earlier)? Which ones have won cups?

Reading some of the comments on here I think this thread is about reasonable expectations and patience.

We have done better than every team that bottomed out with us in 2014/15 and none of the recent cup champions really got to the top much quicker than we are hoping to.

Yet, there is a feeling we are not making progress quickly enough...apart from natural fan angst what is this feeling actually based on?

 

[Dreakmur]

Pretty sure the Bolts spend less on their bottom six than the Leafs re team cap structure

Yes, they spent their money on actual playoff style bottom 6ers. We spent 3.5 on Kerfoot.

 

[conFABulator]

Yes, they spent their money on actual playoff style bottom 6ers. We spent 3.5 on Kerfoot.

There is no doubt that Tampa Bay is current cream of the NHL crop. We should hold them up as an example of what we want to be, we should probably also hope that their window is closing as ours opens up because competing with a team that has the goalie and defenseman in the world is a bit tough, throw in zero state income tax and a sunny, non-fishbowl hockey environment, and the fact that they were $18M over the cap when they won recently at that might be a high bar we need to wait out.

Those aren't excuses for Toronto not succeeding but they are realities the entire NHL is dealing with in competition right now.

 

[keonsbitterness]

Yes, they spent their money on actual playoff style bottom 6ers. We spent 3.5 on Kerfoot.

Before this year's struggle, he was arguably our best player vs the Habs. Which one is real?

 

[Dreakmur]

Before this year's struggle, he was arguably our best player vs the Habs. Which one is real?

They can both be real. Kerfoot looked good compared to the rest of the Leafs. The tallest midget is still short.