There's the Avs, that's about it.
Maybe one could include the Canes but it's very murky then.
The problem is HuGonites starts the rebuild on a very firm date that makes no real sense and start every other rebuild on arbitrary dates that don't fit their own criteria. Why should HuGo get the benefit of their "rebuild" announcement and not other teams?
A team like the Sabres have been losing for 16 years but in that span, they've had 4 GMs.
Their situation isn't that different than us, going back to 1997 and it's not that different than us since 2014 /Carey Price induced contending years. It's very tough to navigate all this, just like the Mcdavid acquisition. We got a top 5 of all time goaltender with a 5th overall, the Sabres got Eichel, a very good player, who quit on them (for good or bad, not debating this.)
The problem is that HuGo inherited a barren offensive pipeline and an overall prospect pool with no elite talent, along with almost 40 million dollars tied to bottom 6 players and bottom pairing dmen.
The habs under 25 offensive depth was literally Suzuki, Caufield, Roy.
Sure the D pipeline was deep, but there was no elite talent and Dman notoriously have long development curves. At the time HuGo took over none of their notable D prospects played any nhl games
When you look at the 3 drafts they’ve participated in, there aren’t any players drafted who have been massive game changers for their clubs.
The reality is that you need good players to improve. The best way to get these are in the draft. It’s entirely unrealistic to expect the rebuild to take off in 3 drafts when 1. There hasn’t been any draftee in those three years that has burned the league 2. Your club had no elite talent in the pipeline with very little depth.
This rebuild was always going to be a slog because the team was missing key pieces everywhere
