Victims of "bad" tanks and rebuilds: How soon did you know something was going wrong?

[ReHabs]

I'm referring to teams that sold vets, missed the playoffs a bunch and lost, and didn't really every compete for the Cup after.

What are some signs the rebuild is going sideways?

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[TeamRenzo]

When Pierre Dorion is in charge

 

[AnomX]

when we signed Tavares.

 

[CaptainShark]

After hours and hours of highly scientific research, I can confirm that the most telling sign is this.

 

[Nogatco Rd]

Great question by OP. Something I’ve wondered about and I’m surprised isn’t discussed more often. Looking forward to some serious answers.

 

[WhatTheDuck]

What are some signs the rebuild is going sideways?

Not a palm tree in sight

 

[Albatros]

 

[Luigi Lemieux]

I think a troubling sign is if your young players are regressing.

 

[NyQuil]

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

I genuinely think that a lot of people don't understand how important intent is in situations like this.

Like the Penguins, Blackhawks, Kings, and Lightning cores were built, in part, with high picks, yes. But mostly these were teams going through serious ownership adversity, or other kinds of limiting factors while trying their darndest.

One can overcome adversity if one maintains their integrity and pride. This is especially true of interdependent groups. Overcoming a big hurdle is possible.

But intentionally quitting, throwing in the towel. I firmly believe that this creates a stink that is very, very hard to shake.

The Sabres did it and haven't looked like a top half team in the league for more than half a season at a time since.

The Oilers did it and it took ten years to even approach competence and that was because they won the lottery of lotteries, and then won another lottery with Draisaitl becoming so good (I also suspect that playing with McDavid raised his ceiling) and then some competent hockey men came in because they wanted to build around McDavid. This cannot be reliably replicated.

The Hawks look utterly lost.

-

Accepting reality is one thing. Trading upcoming free agents, not signing old guys and taking your lumps while your young players learn.

But trading every competent player and laying down on the road ruins a team's culture.

Look at the Sabres in 2015, look at the Hawks recently with Hagel, DeBrincat, etc.

Look at the Rangers right now (different situation, but a similar cultural problem where the players feel like management has literally quit on them).

Group psychology in sports is woefully, woefully misunderstood.

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

when we signed Tavares.

It wasn't signing Tavares it was hiring Dubas.

You notice how Dubas isn't here and they are 1st in the Atlantic, battling for 1st in the NHL?

This is what happens when you have a REAL GM and and REAL coach

 

[MakoSlade]

Serious answer, you have to hit on most of your draft picks, and lottery luck helps. Devils started their rebuild with Pavel Zacha, a good player but not someone who lived up to his draft position in any way, shape or form. They followed that up with Mikey MacLeod, another good player but they missed on better options after.

The turnaround started with lottery luck and good decisions with that luck. Cornerstones Hischier and Hughes were picked over terrible options (Nolan Patrick and Kappo Kakko), both in drafts where the 1 / 2 were a toss up. (I still think the Hughes / Kakko debate was manufactured for attention, I never for one microsecond thought the Devils were going to pick KK).

So yeah, draft is huge. And also a good GM. GMTF has been brilliant for the Devils. He turned around a shattered defense in months 3 years or so back, didn't make any panic moves last year, and addresses their biggest weaknesses this year. He has an eye for need and a solid plan.

 

[NyQuil]

One of the challenges appears to be having the talent coming through the pipeline while also having a sufficiently positive veteran presence to help develop those players in the right way.

If you are too flush with mediocre veterans, it may prevent you from getting into the top 5 in drafting on a regular basis and acquiring the necessary talent to get out of the playoff bubble cycle.

But if there are too few, or they are the wrong guys, the potential that everyone is raving about never really pans out and the youngsters only learn about how to lose.

 

[LeafGrief]

People being overly dramatic about the Leafs already, which should come as no surprise. Our core is dysfunctional and incapable of winning meaningful games, no arguments there, but our rebuild was one of the better ones all things considered.

We got the lottery luck. Our top10 picks in Nylander and Marner were huge successes. Even when we tanked, we had just hired the most in-demand coach in the game, and that dead-last team had no talent but still worked their butts off every night. Once we'd secured Matthews, we started bringing in some more vets and built a pretty good team out of it. We kept our "own rentals" like James Van Riemsdyk and Tyler Bozak in those early years to try and build that winning culture.

If any of Matthews/Marner/Nylander had been duds, it wouldn't have worked. If we had really sold out the soul of the team and gained the "stench", it wouldn't have worked. There were mistakes made, such as the Marleau and Zaitsev deals, Babcock turned out to be Babcock, but by just about any reasonable assessment we built a team that was good enough to make playoff runs. That's something that so many of these lame-duck rebuilds never manage.

For the Leafs I believe it went wrong when the team's culture was built around the egos of our big guns. Most of this lies at the feet of Dubas, and his "we can and we will" comment is probably what really put us on the path to repeated failure that we ended up on. Quite the juxtaposition to Shanahan's comments about players needing to take less to win! I accepted that our core was a sham when we lost to Montreal, others did before that and still others are holding out hope.

Did we have a "bad" tank? No, our early success and the promise we showed is probably one of the factors that actually encouraged many other teams to tank. It was all the rage in 2015 and we made it look easy. It was just those dysfunctional Oilers who couldn't make it work. I remember a Sens fan back in 2019 or so getting really mad at me and asking if it worked for us, why wouldn't it work for them? But a decade into the tanking trend, I think teams are realizing what a fine tightrope it is to walk. We haven't really had recent tank teams win cups in a long, long time.

 

[HockeyVirus]

when we signed Tavares.

The Leafs never did what OP is asking, you just have an axe to grind. Marner draft year the core of the team quit on the franchise and got dealt, and in the Matthews tank year they kept all their vets (JVR, Bozak, Komarov, Gardiner, etc) and most of them ended up injured and shut down for the season.

So next season, the rookies had a core of vets to insulate them.

 

[MHO]

It's a really interesting question and I don't think you can answer it by pointing to one place in time and that's where you went from boom to gloom. It's more of a slow, gradual, life sucking process of depressing reality setting in. I feel like it's like this...

Stage 1: Our team is old, expensive, and not going to win a cup so we need a rebuild!

Stage 2: Our GM finally accepted reality and sold all of our current assets for prospects and draft picks. Yeah our team sucks now but we're so pumped for the future!

Stage 3: Well we didn't get the top pick in the next draft but we're picking 3rd, 14th, and 29th with 2 2nds and 3 3rds. Look at all these great young pieces we have!

Stage 4: Our team is at the bottom of the league but we just drafted Kirby Dach and have a handsome new coach who we don't know much about yet. Still feeling pretty good!

Stage 5: We got the #1 pick! No generational player coming out this year but Owen Power is still a great looking defenseman. Things are looking ok!

Stage 6: Our team is still kind of bad but Dach and Power are playing pretty well. All of our other recent high draft picks are underperforming in Juniors/college but it's still early. They're all like 19 and who is fully mature at that age anyway?

Stage 7: After another bad season, hey we're able to get Lucas Raymond with our 4th pick overall! Solid player! We're starting to realize that none of our later picks are turning into much and free agents don't want to come here unless we overpay but hey, look at our core of Dach, Power, and Raymond...

Stage 8: Uh oh...Kirby Dach kind of sucks and we just paid him a bridge contract. We have a few other prospects who we thought were gonna be top 6/top 4 players turn into 3rd liners and 3rd pairing defensemen fill out our roster with some overpaid free agents. Our team is good enough for 21st in the league in points. Time to hire Torts.

Stage 9: Torts gets the absolute most out of this team and we make the 7th seed in the East! We have no shot of making the finals but hey, we're in. We still have some prospects in our system, they're not playing as well as we hoped but they're young and Dach seems to be finding his game under Torts. Power is coming along well and Raymond looks solid.

Stage 10: The team inevitably revolts against Torts and our other draft picks aren't turning into anything. We're too good to get the next generational talent and not good enough to contend for anything. Another rebuild?

 

[ZachaFlockaFlame]

It wasn't signing Tavares it was hiring Dubas.

You notice how Dubas isn't here and they are 1st in the Atlantic, battling for 1st in the NHL?

This is what happens when you have a REAL GM and and REAL coach

You do realize the Leafs have a lower point percentage right now than any Atlantic division winner in the years Dubas was there? Blaming him for not being better than the historical Bruins/dynastic Lightning is a stretch + the Florida teams that have been generally good in the same window as the Leafs and this is coming from someone who thinks Dubas blows chunks

 

[jigglysquishy]

There's an interesting pattern with the two most successful tanks of the last 25 years (Hawks and Penguins).

Both got a least one superstar with a high, but not first overall pick (Malkin 2nd overall, Toews 3rd overall)
Both had a superstar go first overall (Crosby, Kane), though obviously Crosby is in a class of his own
Both had a superstar draft pick after the first round (Letang 2nd round, Keith 2nd round)
Both had multiple good players get drafted outside the top 10 as well (Seabrook/Crawford/Byfuglien/Brouwer/Bickell/Hjallmarsson and Whitney/Talbot/Goligoski)

Pittsburgh has the higher highs in drafting, and obviously Fleury and Staal are outliers in this regard.

But both teams combined superstars at #1 with 5+ good picks elsewhere.

Getting three superstars in the draft (Crosby,Malkin,Letang Keith/Toews/Kane) in a few years is a huge get. Filling the team with other great picks goes a long way too. Both teams had to retool significantly after their first Cup, but the depth charts from strong drafting helped a lot.

You can add Tampa to this too. Hedman and Stamkos were high picks, but Vasilevsiky was a mid 1st rounder, Kucherov a 2nd round pick, and Point a 3rd rounder.

 

[leafsfan5]

when we signed Tavares.

The Leafs don't have a failed rebuild, they've consistently been one of the better teams in hockey for the last 5 years or so

They have struggled to go from good team to top tier contender, but that's more how they handled the steps after their rebuild than during the rebuild

In reality, the Leafs have had one of the best rebuilds of any team in the last decade. They bottomed out for 3 years, got 3 superstars and shot back in to the playoffs

 

[belair]

 

[WarriorofTime]

I genuinely think that a lot of people don't understand how important intent is in situations like this.

Like the Penguins, Blackhawks, Kings, and Lightning cores were built, in part, with high picks, yes. But mostly these were teams going through serious ownership adversity, or other kinds of limiting factors while trying their darndest.

One can overcome adversity if one maintains their integrity and pride. This is especially true of interdependent groups. Overcoming a big hurdle is possible.

But intentionally quitting, throwing in the towel. I firmly believe that this creates a stink that is very, very hard to shake.

The Sabres did it and haven't looked like a top half team in the league for more than half a season at a time since.

The Oilers did it and it took ten years to even approach competence and that was because they won the lottery of lotteries, and then won another lottery with Draisaitl becoming so good (I also suspect that playing with McDavid raised his ceiling) and then some competent hockey men came in because they wanted to build around McDavid. This cannot be reliably replicated.

The Hawks look utterly lost.

-

Accepting reality is one thing. Trading upcoming free agents, not signing old guys and taking your lumps while your young players learn.

But trading every competent player and laying down on the road ruins a team's culture.

Look at the Sabres in 2015, look at the Hawks recently with Hagel, DeBrincat, etc.

Look at the Rangers right now (different situation, but a similar cultural problem where the players feel like management has literally quit on them).

Group psychology in sports is woefully, woefully misunderstood.

Way too result oriented, imo.

For instance, you conclude Hawks are new Sabres, but there is no way to really say that because even if they hit a bunch of homeruns on the draft board after deciding to blow it up in 2022, it's not like their draft picks aged 18-20 would be in a position to be a winning core and their free agent signings were all generally short-term designed to fill space in order to keep open roster spots and open cap space in the event prospects start delivering. If in 5-6 years all those draft picks are playing great and the Hawks are a winning team, someone will say even when they were losing they had a good culture with Foligno, Dickinson, Mrazek, etc. etc. and battled hard with lots of close losses.

Would anyone have looked at the 2016-17 Avalanche, four years after drafting MacKinnon, six years after drafting Landeskog, eight years after drafting Duchene, and said "that team that was 30th/30th in goals for, 30th/30th in goals against, finished with 48 points on the season, that's a team with integrity and pride, that isn't a team with a losing culture"? Probably not.

When do you know a rebuild sucks? When the team is still not progressing in the standings and they fire the GM, when they start trading away former high draft picks either because they are busts or because they are in a hurry to speed things up, when they start filling up their cap space with long-term free agent high AAV commitments, when high profile players start asking for trades. You basically get 7 seasons when players make the NHL until they can become UFA, and when you start trying to speed up for players further along, those players are closer to that UFA years and you're taking a big risk if you try to make those players "core" when there isn't a core already.

 

[Lshap]

This is really a poll on tanking. We talk about tanking a lot on this board because it's an easy, obvious strategy for a rebuilding team. Tank successfully and you win a shiny, exciting new toy at next year's draft. It's a fun upside-down standings that fans of losing teams can cheer for.

Sure, tanking helps. Florida got Ekblad and Barkov; Tampa got Stamkos and Hedman; Colorado got Landeskog and MacKinnon. Those teams added their core stars by being really bad.

But as stated very well above^, tanking year after year becomes a cheap drug that leads nowhere. Yes, you need some lottery picks, but contending rosters also need lucky later picks and/or bold, big trades. In other words, GMs can't passively hope their team is rescued by a series of 18-year-old prospects.

There's no one-size answer to the OP's question, but it's fair to give a rebuild at least three/four years before judging. Main signs are:

1) Is the first wave of rebuild players showing improvement? After two/three years, your first tank picks should start showing signs of their pedigree.

2) Is the GM active? Is he stocking picks, trade-assets, & cap space? Does the GM have the balls to shift from seller to buyer, make the big trade and bid on a big UFA?

3) Is the timing of all the above a strategic response to the roster's development, or is it an emotional response to fan impatience? Move too slowly and you have a young roster with chronic gaps and no leadership. Move too fast and you generate a short-term gust of wind that'll lift you towards the playoffs, but let you plummet just as quickly.

 

[Washed Up 29YearOld]

When it was 14 years with no playoffs and my team still can’t win a game

 

[Fishy McScales]

 

[Coffee]

When Pierre Dorion is in charge

Summer of Dorion

When’s the documentary coming out ? That was a huge cultural moment for HFboards if we are being honest