Love the deliberately provocative thread title.
SY hasn't made a significantly wrong step yet with the rebuild. Nor is it just a rebuild. He's rebuilding while at the same time trying to compete. These two goals inevitably conflict, friction created by opposing forces rubbing against each other and possibly preventing the fastest attainment of either goal. This friction is further enhanced by many fans, perhaps even SY at the beginning, underestimating the massive amount of work that reaching either goal required. Failure to reach either goal as quickly as many fans want results in the conclusion by a few/many/whatever that he's doing a half-assed job at both.
Why is the rebuilf trackperceived as taking too long? Given the few good resources SY inherited, literally only one good player worth keeping long-term and only three prospects with any potential utility (Ras, Veleno, Berggren), and given lack of Draft access to likely star players, the rebuild was and still is going to be driven by volume of good/very good first-round Draft picks rather than around one or two star quality picks. Accumulation of volume takes time, as witnessed by only two of the first seven first-rounders having passed 150 NHL games. The other five have about 25 combined games, all but one of that by Edvinsson. We're two years at least away from having a minimum necessary volume of potentially impactful young players. To what extent has the rebuild been compromised by the goal of competing now? Very little. The only Draft asset traded was a late first. No top prospect has been traded. The only negative is perhaps lower Draft slots, but it's debatable if any of the guys picked in the top 10 wouldn't have been picked anyway with a slightly better Draft position, and negativity toward the two C prospects IMO is premature and subjective. This year's 15th OA pick would probably have been different with another top 10 pick, but we're at least two years away from knowing what the Draft consequences of that push for a playoff spot will be. The only negative to the rebuild track IMO is what seems like a mediocre job at best with post first-round Draft picks, but that's subject to change. We simply don't know yet what many of those post-first round picks can be and really only Johansson might have been ready to make a first impression bynow.
Why is the compete now trac perceived as taking too long. when there's been obvious improvement every year? There are good reasons for frustration. There has been wastage of opportunity with a few poor signings. There is a never-ending but sometimes reasonable debate about coach quality. I'm as patient as anybody, but I believe keeping Edvinsson in GR for more than half a season compromised both the rebuild and compete now tracks. In the big picture it doesn't make any difference, Edvinsson won't be any different in two years for having 25 fewer games on his current resume, and making or missing last season's playoffs will be irrelevant to what a much different roster will be doing in 3-4 years. Fans naturally live in the moment and there is always a desire to do more to reach short-term goals. Every move SY makes to improve the compete now agenda has been done with the intention of doing the least possible damage to the rebuild track, but it's easy to lose sight of that when Copp does nothing with the puck, Petry is getting 20 minutes and Holl sitting out for the 27th straight game.
My grade for the rebuild track so far: A-minus. My grade for the compete now track, B.
