Pens, Caps, Blues, Bruins...possibly Tampa. It's not true that all windows are short. We arent CBJ.
All 4 of Tampa, St. Louis, Washington, and the Bruins went through re-tooling periods recently before becoming contenders again. All 4 had a window, failed to win the cup, had to retool for a couple years and missed the playoffs before coming back as contenders again.
Only the Pens have managed to maintain being a powerhouse in the league for an extended period of time. And even the Pens you could certainly make the argument that they went through a retool for a couple of years as well while they retooled from having to trade Staal and losing Gonchar. But Crosby and Malkin did enough to keep them in the playoffs despite being 1st or 2nd round exits 3 years in a row.
No team in the league aside from Pittsburgh has had a true window last more then ~5 years. Pittsburgh has done so because they had the two best player in the NHL for the last decade essentially.
Hopefully, the Avs management dont share the same mindset as what apparently most of you here on HF share, which is that we can have our window last 5+ years despite all other teams besides Pittsburgh failing to do so either.
It's that mindset of trying to prolong a window, that has led Winnipeg to the state they are in now. They had a 2-3 year shot at winning it all and instead of being aggressive and making the necessary moves to put that roster over the top they were patient and now that window is pretty much shut again.
We've got 4 years right now before Mack gets a 10M pay raise, to use that gift of a contract to win a cup. After that we are going to have to retool for a couple of years and quite frankly with our drafting record I wouldn't put much faith in a successful retool like what Tampa and Boston were able to do.